This week, the large banks that developed the web-payment method iDEAL for their Dutch customers, transferred the scheme/standard to Currence. Currence is the bank-owned but independent scheme manager for the Dutch domestic products debit-card (PIN), e-purse (Chipknip), direct debit (Incasso) and paper based bill-payment (Acceptgiro).
The consequence of this transaction is that any bank that wishes to use iDEAL may now do so buy purchasing an IDEAL-license from Currence rather than having to come to an agreement with the three developing banks. So the shift of scheme responsibility most certainly leads to a more open market.
At present, there have been 4 million iDEAL transactions on an annual number of 20 million web payments. iDEAL has thus a steep adoption curve with a penetration percentage of 20 % after about 1-2 years after introduction.
