Created in Milan in 2013, Satispay moved to Luxembourg at the end of 2018 with their e-money institution, Satispay Europe SA. The Italian innovative bank-account enabled mobile payment solution, totally independent from credit/debit card networks has now added Auchan to its network of affiliated merchants in Luxembourg. The supermarket chain now accepts the eponymous application of Satispay for the payment of online purchases.
Credits © Mehrad Vosoughi on Unsplash
The app is free of charge. All consumers need to do to use the Satispay app is register by downloading it from the App Store or Google Play and creating a profile. Signing up takes only a couple of minutes and requires just your personal ID and bank account or IBAN number.
There are no sign-up costs or monthly fees for merchants either. The only charge for merchants is a fixed commission of 20 eurocents for payments over 10 euros in-store. When using Satispay as a payment method for e-commerce websites the handling fees are very transparent as well; a 0.5% fee for transactions below 10€ and 0.5% + 20 eurocents for transactions over 10€.
The Satispay platform includes a feature that informs customers of local shops that accept Satispay as a payment method. Satispay has been conceived as a all-in-one-app so in the foreseeable feature it will also allow other non-commercial services, like payment slips, mobile top-ups and road tax payment. All these features, among others, are already available on the Italian market and not yet in Luxembourg, where the company hopes to launch them soon.
With its mobile transaction solution, Satispay intends to differentiate itself from “traditional bank card networks”, while at the same time pulling down “the high commissions typical of the electronic payment industry”, it says on its website.
Dissuaded by Brexit, its managers had initially chosen to operate from London, before opting for the Grand Duchy.
“Our app is already available also in Germany, where we are planning to officially launch our solution in the near future.”
At the end of 2019, the new Luxemburg entity began operations for its commercial launch. On 21 March 2020, Satispay received authorisation as an electronic payment institution from the CSSF, Luxembourg’s payment regulator.
Although the application has been available on Luxembourg’s App Store since the beginning of March, the official launch was postponed until now because of the Covid-19 crisis.
The company has over 100 employees, including 15 in Luxembourg. They are divided between the Kirchberg headquarters and its business development department hosted in the LHoFT.
It boasts more than one million active customers and more than 100,000 physical stores and e-commerce partner sites on its platform.
The Fintech also plans to expand in Europe, starting in the Grand Duchy: “Our app is already available also in Germany, where we are planning to officially launch our solution in the near future”, says Satispay’s CEO and co-founder Alberto Dalmasso.
Satispay arriva in Lussemburgo: primo accordo internazionale per la startup italianahttps://t.co/cR3qkkKUMl pic.twitter.com/rCaSVp9iNV
— HorecaNews.it (@HorecaNewsit) April 24, 2020
In an exclusive interview with Silicon Luxembourg (see our article “Italian digital payment leader Satispay enters Luxembourg market“), he explains how the Covid-19 crisis has been a business opportunity rather than a threat for his company.
