Online travel agency Alpitour World adds MyBank as online payment option

Alpitour Group, UniCredit and MyBank announced today that Alpitour is taking MyBank on their website (www.alpitourworld.com). Alpitour World customers can now use MyBank to pay for their holidays. The payment is made via the customers’ bank account, via their own online or mobile banking platform – an environment they know and trust.

Alpitour World is Italy’s leading integrated tourism group and the first major tourism company to go live with the MyBank solution. The connection of Alpitour World took place with the support of UniCredit.

“MyBank is the ideal way to pay online for holidays. It is fast and simple and solves all the problems related to spending limits and fraud. MyBank allows our customer to buy from their home easily and safely via credit transfer, knowing that they will still have the full spending capacity on their credit card for their holiday,” said Enrico Rao, Responsible for Treasury and Finance Alpitour Group. “We expect a great future for MyBank and look forward to more major banks joining across Europe, which will allow us to sell our products to travellers from outside Italy.”

“MyBank supports our corporate clients in growing their online business by providing their customers with a secure and convenient way to pay online”, said Fabio Stragiotto, Co-leader for the MyBank program at UniCredit S.p.A. “We have many more in the pipeline.”

“We are happy to see more and more companies adding MyBank to their booking sites and web shops. There is a lot of demand from web merchants because customers trust their own bank and this grows the number of people buying online”, said John Broxis, Managing Director of MyBank.

The MyBank solution for initiating SEPA Credit Transfers went live in March 2013. The majority of participant banks are located in Italy with other MyBank participants being located in France and Luxembourg. The roll-out phase of the solution is ongoing with more and more payment service providers making the solution available to businesses and public administrations. The online MyBank mandate solution for SEPA Direct Debits is scheduled to go live later in 2014.

MyBank (www.mybankpayments.eu) is an e-authorisation solution that enables customers to pay for their online purchases via their regular online or mobile banking environment. The solution was launched in March 2013 and is open to all authorised payment service providers (PSPs) in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), including, without limitation, credit institutions and payment institutions. The MyBank Directory, which lists all participating financial institutions, is hosted by SIA, a major financial services technology infrastructure provider based in Milan.

MyBank is geared at supporting the initiation of SEPA payments via the Internet and may at a later stage also be used for transactions in other currencies or for e-identity services. At this stage, MyBank supports the initiation of SEPA Credit Transfers. It is planned to enable customers to create, modify and cancel electronic mandates for SEPA Direct Debits later in 2014.

MyBank has been developed by EBA CLEARING (www.ebaclearing.eu), which also manages the solution. EBA CLEARING is a provider of pan-European payment infrastructure solutions and is owned by 62 of the major banks operating in Europe.

www.alpitourworld.com

Tourist services, hotel accommodation, charter airline, and insurance offers: Alpitour World is synonymous with a 360° approach to tourism.

The Italian Leading Group for tourism is organised in four operating divisions (Tour Operating, Aviation, Hotels and Incoming) with an annual turnover of about €1.0 billion. Holiday after holiday, we take care of the needs of about 3 million Italians, who every year choose to trust our organisation and enjoy their free time in our resorts around the world.

Alpitour World is a group on the move, able to respond to tourist market changes and to anticipate trends and evolving requirements.

www.unicredit.it

UniCredit is one of Europe's leading commercial bank with strong roots in 17 European countries. Our network, which is present in roughly 50 markets, includes more than 9,000 branches and over 148,000 employees (as of 30th September 2013).

In the CEE region, the Group operates the largest international banking network with almost 3,600 branches.

UniCredit operates in the following countries: Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey, Ukraine and Hungary.