SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) is expected to take off quickly and will reach a critical mass in Europe before 2020, according to the results of a web poll by the European Payments Council (EPC).

The results of the poll are below:

More than two-thirds – 68 per cent – of the poll's participants, mostly expected to be European payment professionals, think the critical mass will be achieved in 2020 at the latest. The EPC says that increasing the geographical reach of the Inst scheme is critical to make it a success.

Some key stats about SCT Inst:

• enables the transfer of up to €15,000 in less than 10 seconds;
• nearly 600 payment service providers (PSPs) offer SCT Inst;
• the PSPs are in eight European countries: Austria, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Spain;
• almost 1,000 PSPs have committed to offer Inst services by July 2018;
• PSPs from Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Malta, Portugal and Sweden, as well as others from Germany and the Netherlands, are expected to join the scheme by 2019.