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Erste Group deepens collaboration with Czech start-up Dateio

Erste Group joins forces with Prague-based start-up Dateio to work on the integration of a new discount system into its pan-European banking platform George. The potential solution developed by the Dateio offers discounts linked to clients' payment cards. Erste utilizes its unique asset of having one platform across four retail-markets with more than 5 million users and roughly 25 % digital market share. Thus, Erste Group invested into a 22% share of Dateio becoming a minority shareholder in the Czech company. From an investor’s perspective, Erste expects the roll-out of the service via its own banking platform to increase the value of the start-up.

An implementation version is currently under development and is planned to subsequently go live in Erste markets via George during the first half of 2020. Dateio has already partnered with Erste subsidiaries Česká spořitelna and Banca Comercială Română in the past.

“This case provides a great example how the open architecture of our platform George serves as a base to integrate valuable new services for our customers – regardless whether these services are developed in-house or with external partners,” explains Peter Bosek, Erste Group Member of the Management Board with responsibility for Retail Banking. “We started George with the idea of becoming a platform rather than just an online banking solution. Meanwhile, we have a designated team dedicated to continue this very development in the future.”

Dateio offers a proven IT platform and will take care of the smooth running of the discount program. Dateio is processing the list of card transactions to identify whether a transaction is applicable for discount. Only transactions for cards which have been activated as eligible for the merchant discounts will be shared.

“Our goal in Dateio is to bring to bank clients the most attractive offers from the most relevant retail partners and to provide an absolutely seamless client experience. The decision to integrate our service into George is both a vindication that we are “doing something right” and a crucial step in our future development. Once the integration is completed, Dateio will become by far the biggest card-linked marketing platform in CEE, with span over six key markets and a reach of several millions of clients. This increased scale will further help us with on-boarding of further attractive retail partners. Today, our platform is already used by major retail players in the region, such as Kaufland, Ahold Delhaize, Shell and many others. With George, our proposition to retailers will become even much stronger and, thanks to this, the George users can already look forward to offers from further attractive brands,” explains Ondřej Knot, the CEO of Dateio. 

Dateio is a platform for card-linked marketing, connecting retailers with banks and their clients. Founded in 2013 in Czechia, it currently operates in three markets – Czechia, Slovakia and Romania – and has its service integrated in eight banks. Around 300 retail partners use the platform to provide card-linked offers to bank clients.