Barcelona to host Payment Innovation Hub, groundbreaking center for research in trade and payment methods

• With this initiative, sector leaders are coming together to promote R&D projects
• The promotors say the hub will benefit from Barcelona’s start-up ecosystem

Barcelona will be home to the Payment Innovation Hub, the first innovation hub in trade and payment methods in Spain and one of the first in the world. With this initiative, promoted by CaixaBank, Global Payments, Samsung Pay, Visa and Arval, sectors leaders are uniting to promote joint R&D projects.

This laboratory has been created with an estimated investment of €5 million earmarked for the coming three years. It focuses on three areas of research: automotive sector (connected vehicles), home (Internet of Things) and trade. In addition to research, the hub will also offer training and dissemination activities. The aim is to put technology in the hands of people to make the online and physical purchasing experience as pleasant as possible.

At the presentation, representatives of CaixaBank highlighted that clients who pay with their phone make more transactions than those with a traditional bank card. Representatives from Visa Europe explained that they processed 5 billion contactless transactions last year and that the number of people paying with their phone has tripled over the past year.

Furthermore, representatives from Samsung Pay have identified three main trends in the technology and mobile industry: the search for more secure identification technology (digital fingerprint, iris scan, facial recognition), ease of use (payment with phone camera) and the Internet of Things to make life more comfortable.

Finally, sources from Global Payments say that Barcelona is the perfect place to invest and that their employees and partners around the world will come to the Catalan capital to exchange ideas at this hub. Arval, a global leader in rental vehicles with more than one million in 28 countries, says the new hub will benefit from Barcelona’s start-up ecosystem.

[20/04/2017]