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Faster Payments in 40 countries and many more to follow

FIS define faster payments as, “Inter-bank fully electronic payment systems in which irrevocable funds are transferred from one bank account to another, and where confirmation back to the originator and receiver of the payment is available in one minute or less.” Using this definition the 2018 FIS “Flavors of fast” report shows that there are 40 countries live with faster payment schemes, fuelled in part by regions like Australia, the United States, and the launch of the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) scheme. The SCT Inst is expected to progressively bring faster payments to more than 30 countries over the course of the next year.

SEPA Instant development

A total of 1098 (26%) of European Payment Service Providers (PSPs) have now registered for the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer Scheme. As part of the development of their various instant schemes, the European Payments Council have just published new guidance documents on Reason Codes for SCT, SCT Inst and SDD R-transactions, see:

And the EPC have also issued clarification papers on:

Real-time liquidity management is becoming essential

Real-time payment systems are needed to cope with the new paradigm of instant payment when your company’s liquidity is changing throughout every 24 hours. 

Ad van der Poel, BAML's head of core cash management for GTS EMEA, notes (in our previous post) that the important thing in the B2B payments environment is getting liquidity into accounts at the end of each day. He adds: “If real-time payments become the norm in B2B payments, then treasurers might have to match that with real-time liquidity management too.”

While Steve Baseby pointed out that, “Real time payments are (only) enabled by improved systems.”

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