Europe’s leading pan-European instant payment service RT1 turns five

EBA CLEARING’s instant payment service RT1 has been in the forefront of the real-time payment ramp-up across Europe. Today, on its fifth anniversary, the leading pan-European instant payment system reaches 85 per cent of bank customers in SEPA and processes over two million transactions worth 1.5 billion euro per day on average.

In a proposed Regulation, the European Commission is planning to require all payment service providers (PSPs) to make instant payments available to their customers, at price rates identical to those of SEPA credit transfers and with stronger consumer protection. For PSPs looking to connect to an instant payment service or looking to ramp up their instant payment business, RT1 has the resilience, scalability, liquidity management tools and flexible access options to onboard rapidly accelerating instant payment volumes and to help PSPs meet all requirements and adoption timelines set forth by the Regulation proposal.

“EBA CLEARING is well-positioned to support PSPs in their efforts to meet the upcoming regulatory requirements. RT1 is the easiest path to instant payment adoption: it is aligned with our STEP2-T System, which all PSPs in Europe are already using for their SEPA credit transfers and direct debits. This alignment supports users in adopting SCT Inst in a way that suits their product strategies,” said Hays Littlejohn, CEO of EBA CLEARING. “In addition, RT1 comes with built-in connectivity to TIPS. So RT1 joiners get access to the two pan-European instant payment systems without having to go through two implementations.”

As a user-driven instant payment service, RT1 is designed to evolve in line with user needs. Agile delivery of functionality with frequent iterations ensures that service participants can meet changing requirements and onboard optional value-adding features in a disruption-free and timely way.

“Going forward, our key aim will be to enable PSPs to deliver innovative and ubiquitous end-user solutions on top of RT1; these could significantly enhance user experience, for example at the point of interaction and in e-commerce. Together with the RT1 community, all our efforts are focused on optimising RT1 to enable our users to create these solutions and monetise their investments in instant payments,” said Erwin Kulk, Head of Service Development and Management, EBA CLEARING. “As operator of STEP2, the largest pan-European retail payment system in terms of participation, EBA CLEARING also has vast experience in managing major onboarding exercises and provides extensive testing support to make user adoption – and the path to an enhanced pan-European payments ecosystem – as smooth as possible.”

The Company is also putting efforts into extending the convenience of instant payments across borders beyond SEPA. To this effect, EBA CLEARING has joined forces with U.S. payment system operator The Clearing House (TCH) and SWIFT. With the support of 25 financial institutions from across the Atlantic, an Immediate Cross-Border Payments (IXB) pilot service will be kicked off in the coming months. The IXB pilot leverages EBA CLEARING’s RT1 and TCH’s RTP®, as well as key SWIFT components, for transactions in the euro and U.S. dollar currency corridor.

RT1 was delivered as a pan-European instant payment system for the start of the EPC SCT Inst Scheme in November 2017 with the support of 39 financial institutions from all over Europe. It is owned and operated by EBA CLEARING, a European-owned, European-governed and European-regulated market infrastructure provider.

The first and leading pan-European instant payment infrastructure reaches 85 per cent of bank customers in SEPA and processes over two million transactions worth 1.5 billion euro per day on average. All transactions are settled with immediate finality in central bank money with inter-PSP processing being completed in around one second, across all corners of Europe. A variety of options to interact with the system allow any type of EPC SCT Inst Scheme adherent to access the RT1 infrastructure in the way that best suits their needs.