October 24, 2022 - Konzum enabled its customers to pay via the KEKS Pay application in its webshop and in all stores, making it the first retail chain of consumer goods in Croatia to introduce this type of payment.

As Poslovni writes, the service is available to all customers, regardless of the bank where they have an account. This way, they can easily pay for groceries, household and hygiene items and other products from Konzum's vast offer. The popular payment application, which as many as 300,000 users currently use, is another technological step forward by Konzum to provide customers with the best possible service and shopping experience.

"Since we have more than 600 stores and serve more than half a million customers daily, we take care to respond to their needs as best as possible. We know that the ability to choose a payment method is an important item nowadays. We want to be and remain the first choice for our customers, which is why we continuously introduce the best technologies and innovations. The introduction of payment through the KEKS Pay application is another step forward with which we want to simplify and further improve the shopping experience in Konzum. We will continue to invest in the development of innovations and listen to the needs of our customers to continue providing them with a premium experience," said Ines Barbir, director of the Business Applications Sector.

You need to install the free KEKS Pay application on your smartphone to use this service. Customers can pay the bill very simply, i.e. by scanning the QR code with the help of the application, whether at a regular or self-checkout cash register in physical stores or when purchasing in Konzum's webshop. Dejan Donev, Director of the Digital Banking Sector at Erste Bank, is also satisfied with the cooperation with Konzum.

"KEKS Pay in webshops and at points of sale enables payment with just one swipe of the finger, without tedious copying of card data, which users accept very quickly. Our experience has shown that once customers pay with the KEKS Pay application, they continue to pay in the same way in the future. In addition, users can register not only their debit cards or account but also their credit cards in the application itself, which allows them to choose the type of payment when paying. That's why I believe that Konzum's customers will very quickly recognise the benefits of the KEKS Pay application as a payment method," said Donev.

Konzum is continuously digitalising its operations and introducing innovative payment methods. In addition to the increasing number of self-checkout and cashless cash registers, Konzum also introduced payment in cryptocurrencies through the PayCek platform for processing cryptocurrencies in a fast, simple and secure way. Customers can also opt for any type of payment at the self-checkout counters, which have proven a reliable and very efficient Konzum service.

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October the 8th, 2022 - The Croatian KEKS Pay application (app) has only been gaining in popularity ever since its arrival on the domestic market, and it has now exceeded an extremely impressive 300,000 users.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, more than 300,000 users use the Croatian KEKS Pay app, which the popular bank Erste bank launched a little less than four years ago. Compared to around 230,000 users at the end of 2021, this is a more than encouraging increase of 30 percent. The total volume of transactions which took place through this app over the three quarters of 2022 we've gone through so far amounted to 642 million kuna, 80 percent more than were carried out back during the same period last year, when that sum amounted to 355 million kuna. The average rating of 4.8 on the Google Play Store and 4.9 on the Apple App Store is the best indication of the app's user satisfaction.

From the initial sending and receiving of money between friends, the Croatian KEKS Pay application has developed more and more the last four years, now offering the various options it currently boasts, with just a handful of them being the purchase of GSM vouchers and payment of tolls, the payment of parking, the possibility of making donations and payment in webshops and stores that support KEKS Pay payment.

One of the most popular functionalities of this application is the free payment of utility services from more than 65 bill issuers in over twenty Croatian cities, and new bill issuers, primarily local self-government units, utility companies, kindergartens and others, are continuously added to the KEKS Pay service.

The main advantages of KEKS Pay are simplicity, security and the fact that users are exempt from paying any fees in most cases. The Croatian KEKS Pay app enables the quick and secure sending and receiving of money without the need to pay any fees, and is also the first banking solution present here on the Croatian market intended for all interested users, regardless of which bank they have an account with.

As such, of the total number of users of the KEKS Pay application, 75 percent are clients of other banks, and 25 percent of them have an account opened in Erste bank itself. The app is particularly interesting because of its simplicity. Anyone can install it for free and send or request money from friends without having to enter any irritating account numbers. 

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated Made in Croatia section.

As Gordana Grgas/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 26th of October, 2020, the Zagreb-based IT company Perpetuum Mobile has developed, in cooperation with Erste Bank, a software solution that enables payment with the Keks Pay mobile application in web shops based on the Magento platform.

As Ivo Spigel, co-founder and member of the board of Perpetuum, revealed, this platform is among the strongest and most popular for medium and large clients, it is used by more than 250 thousand web shops across the world, and by about two hundred here in Croatia.

The software solution they developed (the so-called extension that allows merchants to accept and customers to pay using Keks Pay) is free for all companies that want to use it.

The first web shop where it is already in operation is the Fraktura publishing house, which has been selling books online for years through the Magento platform. The point now, as Perpetuum's Ivo Spiegel explained, is that their mobile application solution drastically simplifies the payment process - and thus significantly reduces the percentage of cancellations, making payment much easier for customers.

Of course, now everything depends on the market, ie on how many merchants here in Croatia will be accept Magento, ie how many banks will gain a user for their payment application, and currently there are more than 150 thousand of them.

"From our perspective as an e-commerce company, we can see that the interest of Croatian businessmen in e-business has been growing strongly in 2020, not only in B2C (business-to-consumer) but also in the extremely important B2B (business- to-business) segment,'' explained Perpetuum's co-founder. He added that it is very important for a merchant to be able to use the highest quality e-commerce software for their e-business, and in professional circles, it's most often called a "platform".

Magento is from the portfolio of Adobe, one of the global software giants. Erste already has one payment software solution, implemented for another platform, WooCommerce. For Perpetuum, this is an important step, Spiegel emphasised, in the long-term strategy of connecting various new, innovative payment systems with various e-commerce platforms, both through cooperation with "fintech startup" companies and established companies in the world of finance.

Some more solutions are already in the plan and preparation stages, specifically for the Keks Pay platform. The company is one of the oldest in the IT sector in the country, today with about 40 employees, and last year it had a revenue of 30.4 million kuna, which was mostly generated through licensed software services, as a partner of Microsoft and others.

Perpetuum has also previously developed the integration of the "independent" mobile payment applications Settle and Magento platform, of which the results are still awaited.

"Settle hasn't yet hit the market, but we hope that it will develop, because the company plans to make the Settle application available across all EU markets," Spiegel stated. Settle launched the Oslo-based startup Auka a few years ago, and in March it received a new, significantly improved version for Android and iOS. In addition to Keks Pay and Settle, the Aircash application for mobile payment is also being affirmed here on our market.

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