Floor to our merchants: Mercedes-Benz Financial Services

Eugenio Di Vita, Accounting & Treasury Manager at Mercedes Benz Financial Services Italia S.p.A.

Mercedes needs no introduction. How has the company performed over the past year?

The automotive industry as a whole is undergoing profound transformation, driven by the convergence of technological innovation and the growing demand for clean energy and sustainable mobility. Despite the significant technological challenges facing the sector today, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services Italia has successfully sustained its growth in recent years, concluding 2019 on a strong note.

How important are innovation and digitalization for you? 

At Mercedes, digitalizing processes plays a strategic role and represents an ongoing challenge that we have embraced over the years. The integration of MyBank is a clear example of this commitment. Our digital transformation is a continuous work in progress, with significant investments being made to deliver high-value services that enhance our customers’ user experience while simultaneously improving the efficiency of our internal processes.

Do payments represent a critical area of focus in your company strategy?

Our digital push initially focused on what I’ll call “acquiring”—simplifying and digitalizing the process of attracting potential customers, including through an innovative platform that enables real-time credit assessment. Later, once the leasing and financing contracts were finalized, the focus shifted to the customer experience, aiming to make the entire end-to-end process smoother.

In this context, digitalizing the payment process becomes almost essential—a crucial step to delivering the most efficient customer journey possible. That’s why we chose to implement MyBank: it enables immediate and timely payments, which in turn facilitates the automation of internal processes and generates significant cost savings in management.

Why did you decide to use MyBank and how does it fit your digital development strategy?

We definitely needed a solution that could provide an immediate and secure payment method, while also streamlining our internal management processes. When MyBank became available, we fully leveraged its three key advantages: immediate payment confirmation, irrevocability ensuring payment certainty, and administrative simplification.

What evolution have you observed, and how has MyBank contributed to the digitalization and innovation of your administrative processes and those of your partners?

Currently, we use MyBank to settle receivables with our dealer network, but our goal is to extend its use across the entire company ecosystem. The decision to adopt MyBank stemmed from the need to streamline and make processes more efficient for all parties involved. Indeed, with MyBank, we have successfully optimized internal workflows, significantly reducing administrative costs while providing an efficient process for our partners.

Previously, with traditional bank transfers, payments were credited on T+1, with the possibility of revocation, no immediate authorization, and challenges in reconciliation. This was often due to manual entry errors, where payment details didn’t exactly match the transaction.

MyBank, on the other hand, enables end-to-end automation of the payment process (customer – bank – dealer), eliminates the possibility of rollbacks, and provides immediate confirmation of irrevocable payments. The real-time transmission of information is a major added value, allowing us to achieve 100% automated reconciliation, which greatly enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of these processes.

Moreover, MyBank outperforms instant bank transfers in terms of reach and reconciliation capabilities, and it has no transaction limits—an essential feature for our business. Last but not least, the immediate collection enabled by MyBank supports the company’s cash flow management.

Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is one of the major innovations introduced by PSD2, but it has been a feature of MyBank since its launch. What benefits have you seen so far with MyBank in terms of transaction security?

With MyBank, we were ahead of the curve!

The built-in SCA within MyBank has greatly facilitated its adoption. Today, users are much more vigilant about phishing and fraud, and offering a payment solution that was already fully compliant with European regulations such as PSD2, GDPR, and AML standards has undoubtedly helped accelerate its acceptance among our partners.