Intesa Sanpaolo, EBA Clearing test pan-European instant payments
The duo announced the first successful testing results for a pan-European instant payment solution.
The duo announced the first successful testing results for a pan-European instant payment solution.
Italy’s Intesa Sanpaolo and EBA Clearing have successful carried out the first user testing activities for the latter’s pan-European real-time payment platform. Among institutions funding EBA Clearing’s platform, Intesa Sanpaolo is the first one to connect to the test system. The new payment infrastructure will provide a real-time payment processing engine working 24/7 on any day of the year.
From November 2017, account-servicing payment service providers (AS-PSPs) from across the single euro payment area (SEPA) region will be able to use the highly flexible solution for payment products in euro that comply with the European Payments Council’s (EPC) SEPA instant credit transfer (SCT Inst) scheme and in line with the ISO 20022 global messaging standards for real-time payments.
“Both retail and corporate customers will be able to send credit transfers in real time across Europe, potentially reaching over 500m European citizens and companies in a seamless way – and they will need nothing aside from their current account to do so,” said Stefano Favale, Intesa Sanpaolo’s head of global transaction banking. “The end-to-end process between the originator and beneficiary accounts will take no more than 10 seconds. The payments will be irrevocable and settled in real time subject to pre-funding in central bank funds.”
EBA Clearing’s chief executive officer (CEO), Hays Littlejohn, said: “Intesa Sanpaolo is the first future participant to connect directly to our test system and is amongst the 25 users currently preparing to go live this year.
“Together with those institutions that are planning to connect to the system in 2018, these early joiners represent nearly 85% of the SEPA credit transfer (SCT) traffic processed by our STEP2 system today. More and more banks and service providers are developing services around our new platform, and we are confident that we will see a positive evolution of the reach of the service from the start of the ramp-up period on.”