The Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB) says that person-to-person mobile payment providers across the continent should work together to ensure interoperability.
Following its latest meeting, the ERPB (set up by the ECB as a successor to the Sepa Council), says that it has agreed to "endorse the vision" of allowing anyone to carry out a pan-European P2P mobile payment using a "simple method".
At the moment, says the board, there is fragmentation among providers, with around 50 local systems. Any new offering should seek to work with these, rather than try to provide a competitor.
To get interoperability, outfits offering P2P payments should make the most of existing infrastructure such as Sepa and Ibans, and build a harmonised process to allow data like mobile phone numbers, email addresses and Ibans to be exchanged across borders.
Meanwhile, the ERPB has mandated the European Payments Council (EPC) to design a pan-European scheme for instant payments in euro by November 2015.
The board set the wheels in motion for a system in December after expressing concern that the emergence of new domestic platforms, such as the UK's Faster Payments scheme, might end up creating a fragmented market in Europe for instant payments, similar to what existed in regular payments in the past.
Having set up a task force and issued an initial assessment, the EPC will now come up with a proposal for the design of an instant Sepa Credit Transfer scheme, (SCTinst), which could be adhered to by EU payment service providers on a voluntary basis.