EBA Clearing Reports SEPA Migration Progress
EBA Clearing, Europe’s payment infrastructure solutions provider owned by 62 major banks, said that it STEP2 pan-European retail payments clearing platform has seen ‘considerable volume growth’ in single euro payments area (SEPA) payment processing.
STEP2 is now seeing peak day volumes above 100m SEPA credit transfers and SEPA direct debits (SCTs/SDDs).
These volumes “reflect the accelerating pace of migration to SEPA since the beginning of the year”. According to the latest European Central Bank (ECB) statistics, the overall migration in the euro area from national payment schemes to the pan-European SEPA payment instruments reached close to 94% for SCTs and over 80% for SDDs in February 2014.
“Over the past few months, our STEP2 platform has served as a reliable infrastructure to support the rapid migration of the banks to the new SEPA standards at a pan-European and a domestic level. said Gilbert Lichter, chief executive officer of EBA Clearing.
“We are very happy to support in this way – together with our technology partner SIA SpA – the banks in Europe in coping with the important challenges that the SEPA migration has placed on them. In view of its prominent position and its systemic importance, we have made significant investments to ensure that the STEP2 platform meets state-of-the-art resilience requirements.”
Erkki Poutiainen, senior vice president (SVP), Nordea, and chairman of EBA Clearing added: “As a user of the STEP2 services, I am very pleased with the performance of EBA Clearing and SIA during this important migration exercise across Europe for banks and their customers. This achievement stands at the beginning of a new phase.”