Goal: 100 million customers

Polish financial institutions are actively exploring unconventional collaborations and ecosystem-building strategies to expand their customer base, a significant departure from traditional competitive models. During a debate at the XVI European Financial Congress, industry leaders discussed how entities once primarily rivals are now forging joint projects to reach a target of 100 million customers.

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The market is currently in a phase of intensive experimentation. We are investing very heavily in research and development. Indeed, we are not always 100% able to predict the final outcome of such actions, but we are entering completely new financial services, built in an ecosystem together with our partners.

Tomasz Włodarczyk, Senior Director of Business Development in Poland at Visa, described the market as being in an "intensive experimentation phase." Visa is investing heavily in research and development, entering new financial services built with partners, and seeing encouraging results. He cited the example of Allegro, where hundreds of thousands of cards have already been issued to select users, indicating substantial success with a large potential customer base still to reach.

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Many banks are still competing with each other in exactly the same way. Observing what they do, we see that from time to time each of them adds another payment tool – a ring, a new card, or other novelties. We wanted to do something different. Because as Einstein said, if you keep doing the same thing, you get the same results. We believe that such partnerships, like with Allegro or Żabka, will allow us to acquire more customers than was standard until now.

Marcin Kosiński, President of the Management Board at PKO Finat and Head of Development at PKO Bank Polski, echoed this sentiment, stating that traditional competition is no longer sufficient. He noted that many banks continue to add payment tools incrementally, but PKO BP sought a different approach, inspired by Einstein's quote about repeating the same actions yielding the same results. Partnerships with Allegro and Żabka are expected to yield more customers than conventional methods.

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We decided that our convenience ecosystem was missing a perfect payment experience. The Polish market is very strong in the area of payments, but for us, that is not enough. As an organization, we have enough humility to understand that we don't know everything. Our idea was to find great partners.

For Żabka, integrating financial services was a natural extension of its convenience strategy. Sylwia Drejer-Cichucka, Member of the Management Board at Żappka Pay and Head of Fintech at Żabka, explained that the company identified a need for an excellent payment experience within its convenience ecosystem. Recognizing that Żabka cannot master all competencies internally, they prioritized finding strong partners. She highlighted the synergy of partnering with PKO BP, which brings expertise in financial products, regulations, and security, while Żabka offers its strong brand recognition and customer loyalty.

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PKO BP gives us excellent product knowledge, regulation, and a sense of security. Żabka is a love brand (a brand very liked by customers), but it is far from financial services.