EBA Clearing’s RT1 reaches critical mass of Belgian PSPs for instant payments

EBA Clearing has announced that its RT1 platform has reached critical mass in Belgium for instant payments. The pan-European instant payment infrastructure system currently counts six participants based in Belgium: Aion SA, BNP Paribas Fortis, Belfius, CBC Banque, ING Belgium and KBC Bank. Thanks to this coverage, the vast majority of Belgian payment accounts are now reachable for euro instant payments from all across Europe.

With this latest development, RT1 has established critical mass for instant payments in 11 countries throughout the continent, including Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Spain. RT1 currently counts 76 participants across Europe, which extend reach to 2,588 addressable payment service providers (PSPs) from 24 different SEPA countries listed in the routing table of the system. Together, these PSPs account for over 75% of the regular SEPA credit transfers EBA Clearing processes today. The RT1 system presently handles over 1 million transactions per day, with high performance levels.  Each transaction is processed in around one second on average.

RT1 provides payment service providers in the SEPA zone with a real-time payment processing facility operating around the clock on any day of the year for payments in line with the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) Scheme of the European Payments Council. Payments in RT1 are settled in real-time with immediate finality. RT1 is open to any account-servicing payment service provider (AS-PSP) adhering to the EPC SCT Inst Scheme. A variety of options to interact with the system allow any type of EPC SCT Inst Scheme adherent to access the RT1 platform in the way that best suits their needs.

 

Equifax acquires open banking and transaction data analytics company

A subsidiary of Equifax has acquired transaction data analytics company AccountScore to bolster its open banking and insights capabilities. The acquisition will see Equifax enhance its commercial and consumer product offerings, combining traditional credit bureau information held by Equifax with bank transaction data, facilitated by AccountScore.

Integration of these new data assets will enable Equifax clients to benefit from higher rates of automated, digital income verification, to carry out more granular assessments of affordability and expenditure and offer more predictive and inclusive credit scoring, by using the most up-to-date information available.

Equifax says that the acquisition positions it at the forefront of the latest trends in smart data, including the transition of open banking to open finance, to incorporate data on additional financial services products such as insurance policies, pensions and mortgages. Regulatory approval for the acquisition has been received from the Financial Conduct Authority.

 

Standard Chartered and Gloat create virtual marketplace

Standard Chartered Bank and Gloat have announced a multi-year strategic partnership to enhance the bank’s ability to use the best of their colleagues’ skills and experience for the good of its clients. As the bank anticipates future ways of working, this partnership marks a milestone in its ambition to create an internal virtual marketplace for colleagues that offers different types of career and development opportunities across the organisation and where its leaders can identify, develop, and deploy talent quickly. This in turn creates possibilities for upskilling and reskilling; a new way of developing people, and ultimately unlocking potential, capacity and increasing productivity.

Standard Chartered says that its implementation of Gloat’s solution is another step in its journey to drive innovation and build an inclusive culture. The partnership provides its workforce with an AI-driven platform that matches employees with a range of career opportunities, many of which are linked to skills needed for the future of banking.

Following an experiment of 12,000 users in SCB India, including Global Business Services in Bangalore, 4000 hours of productivity has been unlocked, and the pilot locations have seen the biggest year-on-year increase in satisfaction with career and development opportunities in the bank’s annual employee survey. 2021 will see a phased roll-out across the bank, with the plan to make it available to all employees by 2022.