It was just over six years since Bizum was created. Or, to be more precise, the publication of the first entries of the Sociedad de Procesos de Pago SL with a share of 29 Spanish banking and savings entities in the BORME (Official Gazette of the Mercantile Registry), which aimed to create a new system of instant payments between individuals and purchases in stores. With a peculiarity that surprised everyone: it does not charge commissions.

This model which combines immediacy and free, contrasting with the classic bank transfer model, which in many cases entails costs and which can take two or even three days from ordering to taking effect. So it is not surprising that it has become the reference system for many people in these years when making transfers between individuals. It is true that it has some limitations such as the maximum amount per operation and month, but even within these limits it greatly improves on what traditional transfers provide.

Although Bizum has already become a common service for us, the truth is that when we cross our borders and explore the possibilities in other European countries, we see that the panorama is extremely irregular, which means that in the common European space, only 11% of transfers made are done through platforms like Bizum. Something that is striking because the banking sector has had more than enough time to study and apply the knowledge provided by the Spanish service.

Obviously, there are other services for instant transfers over the Internet. In this sense, PayPal is the oldest and best consolidated reference on the market, but we have to notice a very important difference with Bizum, namely this was created and operated by the banking sector, although it is through a SL set up for this purpose. But PayPal has nothing to do with it.

So and according to Europa Press reports, The European Commission wants to export the Bizum model, or a very similar one, to the whole of Europe and therefore presented a proposal, which aims to make banks obliged to offer a system of instant payments and transfers (within 10 seconds). The service must be operational 24 hours a day, seven days a week and must operate throughout the European Union. This first step towards the introduction of this rule is taken after the Commission verifies the proper functioning of services such as the Spanish one.

However, the Commission does not propose that these services be free, but he intends to demonstrate that his price is in any case lower than the price of traditional transfers, and thus of course even higher than the images that many entities already offer, but which in many cases are much more expensive. The European Commission hoped that the example would spread, so to speak, but after verifying that this is not the case, it is taking measures to regulate it so that its arrival is not delayed even more.

We already know that these types of processes are quite slow and at the moment we are in a very early stage where the details still have to be negotiated between the European Parliament and the Member States of the Union. However, and given the example provided by Bizum, yes, we can hope that this proposal will continue and as a result, in the medium term, Europe finally has an instant transfer system, which is quite a step forward.