EBA Clearing has announced the start of the development phase for a pan-European request to pay (R2P) infrastructure solution. Representatives of the funding banks convened for the kick-off meeting in Frankfurt this week. The development of the solution is supported by 26 payment service providers (PSPs) from 11 countries. It is scheduled to go live in the second half of 2020. 

To explain the need for a pan-European request to pay infrastructure solution and how it ties in with instant payment developments, EBA Clearing has also issued a white paper. 'R2P: The missing piece of the puzzle' sets forth how a separate real-time messaging layer for request to pay will help PSPs to leverage the existing SEPA schemes and infrastructure systems for the timely creation of innovative and sustainable end-user solutions.

“As detailed in our white paper, we believe the time is right for putting into reality a pan-European request to pay solution that allows existing end-user solutions to interconnect and, at the same time, provides the basis for the development of new pan-European payment solutions," said Hays Littlejohn, CEO of EBA Clearing. "Most PSPs now have the necessary real-time capabilities in place to engage in the roll-out of new customer products, as testified by our instant payment system: RT1 currently connects 2,368 PSPs across 19 countries, which account for close to 75% of the SEPA Credit Transfers EBA Clearing processes today. Since its launch, the platform has processed 50 million SCT Inst transactions, in real-time and with immediate finality, and its volumes have recently risen to nearly 2 million payments per week.” 

“Together with our funding institutions, we now have taken the first practical step towards delivering this pan-European request to pay solution," added Erwin Kulk, head of Service Development and Management at EBA Clearing. "In our white paper, we explain why our users are keen to work on request to pay and why now. We are very happy that a representative group of our users supports the development phase of this project and we look forward to working with them towards a go-live of the solution in the second half of 2020.” 

Request to pay is considered a key element in an evolving payments landscape shaped by developments such as open banking and real-time payments. Request to pay solutions can increase certainty, transparency and convenience of payment processes, for instance by speeding up the end-to-end process, reducing risk, and easing reconciliation.

A pan-European request to pay approach is seen as the missing piece of the puzzle for market players to create innovative payment products and services for their customers that are based on real-time messaging as well as the SEPA schemes, and can be used across Europe.

Scheme-related work on the request to pay functionality is ongoing at the level of the European Payments Council (EPC). EBA Clearing contributes to these efforts as part of the Request-To-Pay Multi-Stakeholder Group of the EPC and intends to completely align its solution to the EPC work.