At its eighth meeting, held in March 2017, the Steering Committee of the Mobile Proxy Forum (MPF), which focuses on pan-European interoperability of person-to-person (P2P) mobile payments, approved the rules for operating, joining and participating in the Standardised Proxy Lookup (SPL) service.
The SPL service will allow the exchange of the data necessary to initiate P2P mobile payments between proxy-based P2P mobile payment solutions on a pan-European level. It will facilitate interoperability between participating P2P mobile payment solutions.
The strategy is to overcome a fragmented scenario with simple solutions at first by focusing on the linking of a mobile telephone number (proxy) to an IBAN. However, an open design will be ensured to allow support for additional proxy types and alternative payment account identifiers in a second phase.
The approval of the SPL rules is a first major milestone towards reaching pan-European interoperability in the field of P2P mobile payments. Additional steps are required before the SPL service can be put into practice.
Version 1.1 of the SPL service rules, published on 8 December 2017, contains a revised polling hierarchy logic.
The Steering Committee is the governing body of the MPF, created in 2016 and consisting of European stakeholders involved in P2P mobile payments. The EPC acts as facilitator in this context, and provides secretariat support to the MPF.