Blik digital wallet eyes expansion

In Poland, the brand of Blik wallets is ubiquitous, from convenience stores to parking meters. It’s also indicative of how Mastercard and Visa are repositioning around digital wallets. Now Blik is hoping that Erste Bank’s muscle will help it grow beyond Poland once it acquires Santander, a shareholder in Blik.

“The Austrian lender’s purchase of Poland’s third-biggest bank is ‘certainly a circumstance conducive to our expansion plans,’ according to Dariusz Mazurkiewicz, the chief executive officer of Polski Standard Platnosci, the company that runs Blik,” reports Bloomberg.

“‘Markets in central Europe are strongly consolidated around several banking groups,’ he said in an interview. ‘There is no way we may become the payment standard in the region without strategic cooperation with them.’

Blik is a venture of six Polish banks and Mastercard which offers payment for goods and services, as well as money transfers, without a bank card. It works as an add-on to banking apps, allowing instant money transfers and online payments via a six-digit code.”

Blik now wants other banks to invest to help it grow beyond Poland where it already has 19 million users, maintaining that the offering will help banks fight off new challengers such as Revolut. It will also compete with Wero, the European initiative that will build on other regional euro and non-euro digital wallets.