Otto introduces instant payments

Online retailer Otto says it’s the first ecommerce company in Germany that enables instant payments for its customers. Thanks to a cooperation with Hanseatic Bank, Otto claims it’s able to offer a better service, like faster delivery, now customers can transfer money instantly.

The Otto Group has partnered with the German bank Hanseatic Bank [pdf] to develop an API which makes this all possible. In Germany, the first banks already offer instant payments for their customers and a large part of the financial instutions in this European country are currently working on the implementation.

Real-time money transfers offer enormous potential

But in the ecommerce industry, real-time money transfers couldn’t be used yet, although they do offer enormous potential. According to the Otto Group, it lacked a technical interface that provides uniform information processes that not only enable payments to be made within seconds, but also automatically process these payments in real-time.

Instead of “sitting in the waiting room and waiting for a solution”, the German retail group partnered with the Hanseatic Bank to develop their own API that would make this possible.

Real-time economy now active in payments industry

“We, as pioneers in the German ecommerce industry, are proud to present the first practice-relevant application”, Boris Jendruschewitz of Otto Group commented. “With this solution, we transfer the real-time economy into the payments system of the German ecommerce industry.”