New partnerships and initiatives are acclerating the spread and use of immediate payment systems in Europe. The EBA have also announced a programme to review and improve their overall EURO1 service.

Icon Solutions linking their system to SIAnet

Icon Solutions has completed connectivity testing between their Instant Payments Framework (IPF) and SIA’s high-speed and secure network infrastructure SIAnet, which provides access to EBA Clearing’s platform for instant payments. This will enable European banks to connect directly to EBA Clearing’s instant payment service SCT Inst. 

Icon claim that IPF:

• will take care of the low-level technical details and provides a simple, business oriented interface to payment systems, allowing ISO20022 payment messages to be sent and received, and handle issues such as cryptography, session management and clustering automatically
• provide high speed, high availability and massive throughput with a low cost of ownership
• will be a key tool for banks wanting to implement instant payments allowing for the rapid adoption of SCT Inst without the need for re-engineering existing payment systems.

ACI Worldwide to Connect European Banks to Pan-European Instant Payments

ACI Worldwide, a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, have announced that they will offer their UP Immediate Payments solution via a hosted cloud, enabling financial institutions across Europe to share connectivity to the EBA RT1 scheme and thus reduce the costs of real-time operations and time to market.

The service will be offered via ACI’s state-of-the art data center in Limerick, Ireland, which opened last year in order to satisfy growing demand for ACI’s private cloud solutions among its European customers.

Barry Kislingbury, Director Solution Consulting, Immediate Payments, ACI Worldwide commented: “ACI’s UP Immediate Payments is a tried and tested solution that empowers financial institutions to offer real-time services to customers in record time. A critical function of a new real-time payments system is its accessibility to financial institutions of all sizes. For smaller banks with fewer resources, the ability to rely on support from an industry leader like ACI will provide invaluable support as well as time and cost savings.”

EBA CLEARING launches programme on future positioning of its high-value payment system EURO1

EBA CLEARING is launching a programme for the future positioning and potential evolution of its EURO1 system - an alternative to TARGET2 with a market share of 40%. Europe’s leading private-sector provider of large-value payment services is rallying its user community for a joint investigation into these topics over the next year. This initial study should serve to define the requirements and roadmap for an implementation project, which could potentially be rolled out as early as 2020.

EBA CLEARING is kicking off this programme to both react to and anticipate important market developments such as the upcoming introduction of real-time euro payments, the industry-wide migration to ISO 20022 standards for high-value payments as well as evolving regulatory and oversight requirements impacting many relevant areas, including liquidity management and payment system operation.

“With our real-time payment platform RT1 all set for its go-live in November, we are ready to revisit the positioning of EURO1 with our user community,” said Hays Littlejohn, Chief Executive Officer of EBA CLEARING.

“While there are quite a few drivers motivating the launch of our new programme, a recent user consultation has also confirmed that EURO1 continues to be highly valued in its current set-up and is considered by our users to be fit for purpose for the next few years. That is why our initiative will strive to strike a fine balance: ready EURO1 for the longer-term future by adapting it to all the changes we can expect in the high-value payments world, while also maintaining and potentially enhancing its value and, where possible, leveraging investments already made.”

Apparently EBA are expecting that implementation of the future service and value proposition will be delivered by 2020 at latest.

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CTMfile take: Pan-Europe immediate payment solutions will become the norm in the next 2-3 years The question is will your payables and receivables systems be able to take advantage of these new solutions from banks and fintechs?