Paolo Ghia, SIA
Italian payments firm SIA has invested in a 3.17% stake in technical university Politecnico di Milano (MIP).
SIA is the third new partner to join in 2016 after Microsoft and Whirlpool, and says it has already been collaborating with MIP for several years on international innovation and development projects.
“Being close to companies and to the business world is at the heart of MIP’s strategy,” says Andrea Sianesi, dean of MIP. “The arrival of SIA represents an important credit to the quality of our educational and project management activities and more.”
Sianesi adds it is making “significant investments” in Smart Learning – a portfolio of training products and activities “aimed at individuals and companies capable of exploiting to the maximum the potential of digital technology.”
Paolo Ghia, human resources and organisation director of SIA, says the partnership “will advance the development of the company and strengthen the skills of our staff. And let us not forget that the internationality expressed by MIP is a further point of interest considering our ambitious objectives of growth on foreign markets”.
Telecom Italia, who recently teamed with SIA for e-payments, is also one of the 20 companies and institutions that make up the corporate structure of MIP.
Viva l’Italia
There have been several recent developments in Italy’s payments and banking space.
Jiffy – the instant mobile payments service developed by SIA – is coming to Italian stores. The person-to-business (P2B) project is piloted in Milan and Bergamo, allowing customers to pay via app at participating retail outlets authorised by UBI Banca.
Meanwhile, Nets and Istituto Centrale delle Banche Popolari Italiane (ICBPI) joined forces to launch an instant payments solution in Italy. The new offering is set to go live in Q1 next year. It will be based on Nets’ RealTime24/7 platform and will serve the Italian payment service providers (PSPs).
In an opinion piece, Alberto Cuccu, chief product officer at Objectway, looked at the digitisation of private banking in Italy.