Cash maybe losing its popularity, but in countries like Poland it still fills a large need in the market. Poland is a relatively young market that has only been developing banking solutions for a few decades. Global payment providers like VISA or Mastercard have been present in the Central European country for many years. But even with substantial investment into local projects there is still a large reliance on cash in Poland today. To find out more we reached out to one of the largest payment solution providers, ITCARD, and asked them how they do it in Poland.
ITCARD is the biggest financial transaction processing company in Poland. It was created in 2010. The company supports all areas of payment management across cards, ATM and POS terminals. The company operates ATMs and cash recyclers or ‘cash deposit machines’ for major banks and financial institutions in the country. It also runs its own Planet Cash ATM network with over 7,400 devices across Poland. The company additionally operates in the Czech Republic and Croatia.
One of the leading figures at ITCARD today is Weronika Chrzanowska, Director of Cards Banking & Fintech Department. Weronika has been with the company for almost ten years. During her time at the company she has overseen a host of milestones in ITCARD’s development. One of these developments includes a card tokenization project in Apple and Google wallets. Another development was the Fintech in the box program with VISA.
At a recent ceremony at a Cashless Club event in Poland, the results of this year’s ranking and the list of emerging stars of Polish payments were announced. Weronika was recognized as the most influential woman in payments in 2024 by the editorial team at cashless.pl.
Weronika also represents Planet Pay, a part of the ITCARD Group, which is authorized by Visa and Mastercard as a payment acquirer. Planet Pay is a principal member of VISA and is licensed by the Financial Supervision Commission of Poland as a National Payment Institution.
The Rise of ITCARD in Poland
Weronika’s time at ITCARD has seen her career pivot from a more technical role to a client facing role over the years. This has also coincided with the growth of collaboration between ITCARD and VISA.
With VISA in Poland Weronika supported the payment giant in the creation of a new hub for fintechs who want to issue cards and develop in embedded finance. ITCARD was given the opportunity to develop this initiative alongside VISA. The initiative was called Fintech in the box.
In her more client-focussed role Weronika was able to use her expertise from building applications and authorization processing. Weronika believes that in her role “sales is knowledge”. Clients felt very comfortable with her because she knew how to build the product. She knew how to integrate the product into customer’s solutions. This in turn led to further client-driven initiatives together with VISA.
Issuing and Processing Cards and Payments in Poland
To explain better the background of ITCARD as a payment processor, Weronika explained the company’s relationship with VISA and Mastercard.
ITCARD is a payment processor for both VISA and Mastercard,
“What is unique about ITCARD is that it is a card issuer and a processor in one company,” explained Weronika. “Usually there is a BIN sponsor which has to engage in processing with a fintech entity and it has to get the licence from VISA or Mastercard too.” Normally the BIN sponsor handles processing payments, complying with regulation, as well as monitoring and following the rules of the card scheme they belong to. With ITCARD the services the company offers are far wider.
“In ITCARD we have this advantage that we are both a payment institution as well as a processor for the cards,” Weronika added. “We also have all the systems and tools to integrate VISA. For example I can make any needed changes for my client very smoothly with the ITCARD system. This puts us at an advantage compared to the other BIN sponsors operating on the market.”
How Poland’s Fintech Market is Different
Weronika went on to share her insights about the Polish payment market. “The Polish payment market is new,” she highlighted. “We have the latest technology because we applied it 20 years ago and not 40 years ago.”
“Some of the larger payment processors have offline offerings when it comes to embedded finance.” In Poland things are totally different, Weronika shared. Everything is based on APIs, and everything is online.
“The Polish market is very innovative,” Weronika continued. “It is also very competitive, and the margin is not as attractive for big payment processors as in other European countries.” This means that the big payment processors, the likes of thredd and others, find it hard to support fintechs in the Polish market.
From Cash Deposit Machines to outsourcing multiple Bank’s ATM networks
The conversation moved on to other areas of the fintech ecosystem that ITCARD currently supports.
One of these areas is the maintenance and outsourcing of cash deposit machines. ITCARD is the market leader in this area. The firm works with companies such as Diebold Nixdorf who provide the hardware behind ATMs. This hardware is supplied for normal ATMs as well (not just cash deposit machines), which ITCARD offer as a white label solution to banks like BNP Paribas or ING in Poland.
The fees for using the ATMs are set by the banks themselves. This means that using ITCARD’s infrastructure over 20 million Polish clients can withdraw money with no fees.
Another company benefitting from ITCARD’s cash deposit machines is ZEN.com. The company benefits from many of the services offered by ITCARD including access to cash deposit machines by the challenger bank’s customers. ZEN is very different from Revolut though, as Polish consumers are also different, Weronika explained.
What Polish consumers want
In Poland the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) sector is set to reach new heights. An annual growth of 17.1% is expected in 2024 with the market size set to expand to over $2 billion USD by the end of this year. In the UK and Germany growth is expected to be a little slower. In the case of Poland the growth is mainly due to the continuous rise of popularity of ecommerce.
ITCARD offers customers both online BNPL payments as well as the support to use BNPL in brick-and-mortar shops. “We can give them VISA cards (virtual or physical) because they can be accepted everywhere,” explained Weronika. “This allows our customers to build a use case for their product based on card payments. For instance by adding BNPL solutions. It also means that end users are engaged as BNPL is popular in Poland.” This is just one example of the trends that are driving the way that the team at ITCARD work with customers.
Weronika went on to share how big players might consider Poland to be a growing economy with an innovative market. But that Polish clients and end-users need solutions that are tailor-made. Something that the bigger companies offering these services on the international markets are not keen on doing. In fact, it is often not profitable for them to create such intricate bespoke solutions just for one market.
“I have about 15 fintech projects that need implementation currently,” Weronika highlighted. “Each one of them is unique and each one of them is different. I am not aware of any of the larger companies in the sector offering this level of customization.
“We engage on many levels with our customers. We prepare all the documentation for customers. For example we support them in how to create a fraud monitoring service because we also have a fraud detection system. Our team can help them to set rules for this project.”
“ITCARD doesn’t just give its’ customers an API they integrate independently,” Weronika summarized. “With ITCARD it’s a constant collaboration between us and the fintechs. People who work for the fintechs are really engaged in the project. They look to go very deep into the details of each project. This is because fintechs in Poland have very little resources. They may have basic product marketing, but they don’t have substantial technical teams who can help implement a big project. We help them.”
ITCARD’s recent new Collaborations
In 2024 so far ITCARD has announced two new partnerships. The first of these collaborations is with Auriga, a custom software development company headquartered in Bari, Italy. The company delivers software for ATMs and will help ITCARD to move to a single software platform that can support the entire ATM fleet currently managed by the company.
More specifically, the collaboration means that the same software can work across multiple hardware devices. Whether the ATM is manufactured by NCR or Diebold Nixdorf or any other supplier, the software will work on any of these machines. This means that time to market will be much quicker, benefitting customers and consumers in the long run.
The other collaboration that ITCARD has instigated is with SaaScada’s partner ecosystem. The partnership was only agreed a few weeks ago. SaaScada is a cloud-based core banking platform that helps financial institutions develop digital banking services. It is a B2B platform that allows existing institutions to improve their services, challengers to start from scratch, and non-banking organizations to embed fintech.
SaaScada allows customers to receive money using any combination of local and international payment rails such as SEPA, BACS, CHAPS or SWIFT. ITCARD will be able to refer maturing customers to SaaScada.. This is just one example of the benefits of SaaScada’s partner ecosystem.
ITCARD is one of the fintechs from Poland worth keeping an eye on. The company’s products are already available in some countries outside of Poland, and with the additional partnerships from 2024 the future is bright. The future is also a bespoke tailored solution for the burgeoning Polish and Central Eastern European markets.
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Author: Andy Samu
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