A joint mobile payment solution for Switzerland?

Will Swiss mobile payment providers soon join forces?"Switzerland is too small for more than one mobile payment provider," said mobile payment expert Tobias Wirth recently in a Interview with MK. Now the market seems to be moving in this direction - probably also out of fear of foreign competition such as Apple, Google and Co.The five largest Swiss banks Credit Suisse, PostFinance, Raiffeisen, UBS and ZKB, the financial infrastructure service provider SIX, and the retailers Coop and Migros as well as Swisscom have started exploratory talks regarding a joint solution for digital payment services in Switzerland. The talks are open-ended. They are intended to clarify whether and to what extent a joint, strong and customer-friendly mobile payment system can be rolled out quickly across all channels and throughout Switzerland. The joint solution could be used by all customers and would be open to all merchants, banks, payment card issuers and other market participants. Existing customer contracts would be transferred depending on the solution. Investment protection for business customers with regard to infrastructure and system adaptations would remain guaranteed, and the parties involved will inform the public of the initial results of the talks by the beginning of May at the latest. Announced new functions of TWINT (digital stamp cards, couponing, direct account connection) and Paymit (payment at the point of sale, in-app payment, payment in e-commerce) will be introduced as planned regardless of the progress of the talks.