PAYMENT INNOVATIONS IN POLAND: A NEW APPROACH OF THE BANKING SECTOR TO INTRODUCING PAYMENT SOLUTIONS

Abstract

The aim of our work is to determine the involvement and plans of banks concerning the introduction of payment innovations in the Polish market. This empirical study was based on the results of two surveys. The first survey allowed us to obtain the official positions of 24 commercial banks. The second survey included the opinions of 70 experts, who were senior managers from banks and other payment market institutions. The paper presents the scope of the implementation of payment innovations and five-year plans outlined by the banks. It proved that commercial banks, including both the largest ones and those with a smaller market share, are extremely interested in payment innovations and are ready to implement many solutions at the same time. This new phenomenon can be described as the “universal innovativeness” of banks. Most of these innovations are intended to improve customer convenience, which helps banks to achieve an important strategic objective. Poland had recent changes in legal regulations which considerably reduced the interchange fee in card schemes. Our results indicated that, in spite of the decrease of the banks’ revenue, the innovation process did not slow down. A new situation is coopetition between banks in Poland, used as a successful model to implement the domestic mobile payment system BLIK. The Polish market of payment services has recently become one of the most innovative in the world. The diversification of innovations implemented by the banks may be read as a strategic response of those institutions to the dynamic technological advancements of FinTech and the related uncertainty of future trends in the payment market. The results have allowed us to formulate a hypothesis that is a new paradigm of a portfolio approach to introducing payment innovations that have appeared in banking.