BLIK

BLIK is Poland's mobile payment scheme, operated by Polski Standard Płatności (PSP), a Warsaw company that six Polish banks set up in 2013. The service went live in February 2015. PSP's shareholders today are Alior Bank, Bank Millennium, Erste Bank Polska (the former Santander Bank Polska), ING Bank Śląski, mBank, PKO Bank Polski and Mastercard. In 2025 BLIK handled 2.9 billion transactions worth PLN 441.5 billion, and by June 2026 it had 21.6 million active users. That scale led the National Bank of Poland to reclassify it as a systemically important payment system in September 2026.

To pay online, the shopper generates a six-digit code in their banking app, enters it at checkout within two minutes and confirms with a PIN. Repeat customers can use one-click payments without a fresh code, and a recurring service lets merchants take fixed or variable amounts under a mandate the customer controls in the app. Codes also work at shop terminals and cash machines, alongside contactless BLIK and phone-number transfers. Full and partial refunds are available. BLIK does run a claims process for suspected fraud, double charges and wrong amounts, so merchants should expect occasional disputes.

Merchants connect through an acquirer rather than to BLIK itself. The scheme lists dozens, from Polish gateways such as PayU, Przelewy24, Tpay and mBank's Paynow to international providers including Adyen, Stripe, Nuvei and Checkout.com, and each sets its own pricing.

Outside Poland, adoption is thinner than the expansion headlines suggest. Slovakia went live in September 2024, but Tatra banka is still the only bank issuing BLIK codes there, with payments in euros. BLIK Romania has held a central bank authorisation since October 2024, yet no Romanian bank had launched by mid-2026. For merchants selling to Polish consumers it is hard to leave out, since online purchases made up about half of BLIK's 2025 volume.