Bettina Rose and Torben Kelbch will become the new Managing Directors of the Request to Pay platform PAYCY, a subsidiary of the software and consulting company PPI AG, on 1 May 2024. The two will succeed Markus Best, who will be taking on new challenges outside the PPI group.

"Markus Best's task together with his team was to bring PAYCY to market maturity. With thesuccessful first processing of a payment initiated via Request to Pay in December 2023, we have reached this milestone," says Dr Thorsten Völkel, CEO of PPI AG. Following the transition to regular operations, Markus Best is now handing over the CEO position to his successors Bettina Rose and Torben Kelbch.

Bettina Rose is Head of Market Strategy and Market Portfolio Payments at PPI. In addition, as Chief Platform Officer, she is already part of PAYCY's management team and, together with Markus Best, has played a key role in its development.

Torben Kelbch is the Managing Director of PPI FS, a subsidiary of PPI AG. As a managed services provider, the company offers its customers, among other things, the technical operation of PPI applications and third-party software in the cloud. This also includes the technical processing of the Request to Pay platform PAYCY.

Both will fulfil their new roles parallel to their previous functions at PPI AG. In this way, the requirements of the Request to Pay subsidiary are to be optimally anchored in the parent company. "I am delighted that we have been able to recruit Bettina Rose and Torben Kelbch, two experienced managers and proven experts in the field of Request to Pay, as Managing Directors of PAYCY. Together with their team, they will drive PAYCY's continued growth and ensure that even more financial institutions across Europe join the platform," says Dr Völkel.

PAYCY is a white-label payments platform. Financial institutions connected to the platform can offer their customers value-added services around fully automated billing processes. PAYCY generates a payment request directly from the invoice using the Request to Pay procedure and delivers it via the creditor's bank. The invoice recipients, in turn, can pay the receivable with just a single authorisation. The invoice is permanently linked to the payment; this creates transparency on how much was paid when and for what.

With Request to Pay (RTP), invoices may be displayed at the online bank account and settled directly via an automatically generated payment notification in the future. DZ BANK relies on PPI AG's white-label platform PAYCY for the implementation.

DZ BANK and PPI AG are launching a joint initiative to revolutionise European payments. To achieve this, PPI AG is developing the request-to-pay platform PAYCY for the European financial industry. It enables a seamless link between invoicing and payment. DZ BANK will offer the RTP service to its customers and the cooperative banks and will not only be the first users, but will actively participate in the development and pilot it to market maturity. Payment requests can be created in real time from an invoice. The process is based on the Europe-wide RTP approach.

Reducing manual efforts

Corporate customers of banks can send and receive invoices in the simplest way in a format of their choice. Payment recipients are shown clearly which invoices have already been paid; for debtors, invoices are permanently visible in their online account. All invoice data management at PAYCY is carried out in accordance with the data and payment transaction guidelines of the euro area. Manual efforts in invoicing can be significantly reduced, while transparency and convenience of the payment can be considerably increased. PAYCY is an important milestone for the digital transformation and the efficient implementation of payments processes. For financial institutions, the new service offers the opportunity to become more prominent again in everyday payments and to offer additional services.

Digital simplification for corporate and private customers alike

The potential behind the PAYCY white-label platform is enormous – after all, over 32 billion bills are exchanged every year in Germany alone, 50 per cent of which are addressed to private customers. Both corporate and private customers will benefit from digital simplification, and applications at the POS or in e-commerce are also planned. The European go-live is planned for 2023. 

Offering completely new services

"Request to Pay builds the bridge between invoicing and payment and enables us as a bank to offer our customers completely new services," says Thomas Ullrich, the DZ BANK board member responsible for transaction banking. The PAYCY platform is open to all market participants and offers financial institutions clear advantages in terms of time-to-market and market penetration.

The future of payments solutions

"The bank-neutral PAYCY platform will change the payments industry. Many market participants are watching the current development very closely. Everyone agrees that Request to Pay represents a great opportunity for banks to establish new business centred around the account. What is missing are central and neutral infrastructure offers to keep investments manageable and to leverage synergies. With PAYCY, we are closing this gap," explains Dr Thorsten Völkel, CEO of PPI AG and responsible for its payments division.

About DZ BANK AG

DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral-Genossenschaftsbank, Frankfurt am Main, is majority-owned by those who work directly with it – the approximately 800 cooperative banks in Germany. As a central bank and central institution, its mandate is to support the business of the many independent cooperative banks in the regions and to strengthen their competitive position. The combination of local customer knowledge and central product expertise has proven to be highly effective. With almost 9 billion transactions in 2021, DZ BANK is the largest SEPA processor in Germany.