They can do this with Blik, a new service set up by Polish Payment Standard, a company that’s formed by Poland’s six financial institutions. The participating banks are Alior Bank, Bank Millennium, Bank Azchodni WBK, mBank, ING Bank and PKO Bank Polski. Together they created the Polish Payment Standard and were granted permission for this company by the National Bank of Poland in November 2014.
Their initiative, called Blik, was already announced in 2014, but went live just recently. With the new service, customers of the aforementioned banks can use their smartphones to make payments in stores and online, withdraw cash from ATMs at all the participating banks and send P2P payments to customers of any of the six banks.
Other banks operating in Poland have also signed letters of intent to join Blik, including Eurobank, BNP Paribas Bank Polska, Credit Agricole, Getin Bank, Idea Bank, Dotpay, CashBill and ITCard. This means almost every bank is joining the service, which will make Blik a universal payment method in Poland.
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