Addressing The European
Strategic Payments Challenges

Today major corporations face an increasing number of strategic challenges for their payments operations, as a result of commercial, technological, regulatory and competitive developments in Europe. An equal challenge is to identify specialist advisors who can research markets, identify opportunities, build new offers and products to enable innovation.

The EPCA network has the full range of capabilities to meet the needs of international payments companies.

Monitoring the market is more essential than ever. EPCA members are embedded in their local markets and as a result fully understand domestic payments issues. Members are thus able to support strategic, tactical and operational decision making by large corporate executives and assess individual national requirements in the context of Pan European trends. Another reason for choosing EPCA members as “best in class” advisors.

About Us

History

The European Payments Consulting Association (EPCA) was created in 1998 by three independent payment consulting companies – PaySys in Germany, PSE Consulting in UK and PlusCon in Denmark. The founder members recognised they needed a Pan EU network if they were to deliver payments assignments to large International and European clients.

Membership Growth

Since 1998 the EPCA has grown steadily. In addition to the founders, the Association has members in France (Galitt - part of Sopra Steria Group), Hungary (Invendor), Italy (CleverAdvice), Finland (Rieger), Latvia (Vedicard), Netherlands (Connective Payments), Norway (Avantio) and CIS/Eastern Asia (Alexey Martsinkovskiy).

Independent Advice

All members are independent, do not take commissions and offer wide range of business, operational and technical specialist payments consulting services.

Geographies

Members primarily operate across the 28 EU countries, but several have practices that extend to Africa, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, CIS/Eastern Asia, South America, the Middle East and the US.

Size

The Association has a aggregate turnover of €17m pa and supports a customer base of over 500 leading European companies. Collectively members have a team of over 80 highly skilled payments professionals with over 500 years of payments business experience.

The EPCA’s Mission

The EPCA Network

To enable the network to deliver “Best in Class” domestic and Pan EU payments consulting assignments to large international and Pan European clients.

Special Skills

To offer large clients the specialist payment skills of individual EPCA members including.

Target clients

To support the full range of business, consumers (B2C and B2B) payments players, including large corporates, utilities, merchants, banks, marketplaces, processors, gateways, card schemes, ACHs, software providers, issuers, acquirers and Fintech.

All Sector Coverage

To help members offer services to a wide range of online and face to face retail and corporate payment sectors covering airline, travel, insurance, hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, entertainment, as well as small, medium and large merchants.

Payments Business

  • ‒Market Analysis
    ‒Innovation Strategies
    ‒New Proposition and Business Case Construction Development
    ‒Product Planning and Implementation
    ‒Legal and Regulatory Requirements
    ‒M&A Targeting and Due Diligence

Payments Operations

  • ‒RFI/RFP Management
    ‒Target Operating Models and Customer Journey Development
    ‒Risk/Fraud Management and Assessment
    ‒Compliance Process and Procedures
    ‒Operational Audits and KPI
    ‒Operating Metrics and Staffing Plans

Payments Technology

  • ‒Technical/Development Project Management
    ‒Processing Architecture Design
    ‒Business Requirements Definitions
    ‒Development and Implementation Planning
    ‒Testing and Implementation Support
    ‒Business and Operational Training

Examples of EPCA Member Clients

Where EPCA Members Lead…

Methodologies

Members have over 22 years experience of working together to deliver assignments to Europe’s payments businesses. Services range from opportunity research, C-level innovation strategies, regulatory impact assessments to go-to-market planning through to technical design and development project leadership. In delivering these assignments team members have developed tested frameworks which are used to rapidly deliver high value advice to their clients.

Primary Research

Each year EPCA members carry out a large number of primary research projects for large corporates within the B2B environment talking to merchants, acquirers, issuers, and gateways across the European market. Studies include the identification of processing opportunities, merchant and consumer reviews on new acceptance services, acquirer views on new platforms and technology, bank and merchant views on Instant Payment and Open Banking innovation.

Leading Payments Innovation

Members have been at the forefront of payments innovation in the European market for over two decades. Members have participated in many of the key payments developments in the their domestic markets. They bring this experience to their assignments, where large corporate clients are looking to develop new and innovative opportunities, products or business models.

Managing RFPs

Members regularly assist in managing RFIs/RFPs processes for merchants, acquirers, issuers and gateways to select processors, software, gateways and acquirer suppliers. Members apply a rigorous and objective, approach to supplier selection based on their extensive understanding of the market’s cost structures, and player reputations.

Large Company Strategies

Members deliver insight driven strategic advisory assignments to many senior international and Pan European stakeholders in the payments business. Their common strategic analysis framework embraces organic/inorganic growth, new product design and international market expansion. Members have in place a robust customer and market focussed approach that ensures their clients strategies are aligned with the latest market developments.

New Operating Models

Members have developed new Operating Models for a wide range of European payments players. These models have helped realign products, services and customer journeys with the market. New models have also helped transform organisations post-integration/divestment, defined new regulatory/compliance requirements and reflect changing customer requirements. Recommendations typically cover all aspects of an organisation’s structure, people, processes and technology as well as highlighting new roles, new organograms, new flows, KPIs and performance targets.

Find out more about our members

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EPCA Members

Contact us

For more information about EPCA, our services and expertise, please contact one of the EPCA members
directly. You can also contact us using this form below.

EPCA is happy to welcome new partners. Should you be interested in joining the association, please
contact the EPCA secretariat.

Contact info

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