Last month, a report from FIS that we covered on CTMfile found that Europe's request to pay (R2P) service was helping to drive adoption of real-time payments. Now SIA, a European hi-tech company in payment services and infrastructures, controlled by CDP Equity, has announced that it will enable corporates, banks, public administration bodies and fintechs to access the request to pay (R2P) service on EBA Clearing’s technology infrastructure, compliant with the European Payments Council (EPC) scheme. 

Request to pay is a payment method that allows a beneficiary to send a request in real-time, through different digital channels, to a payer who can then approve and execute the operation. It is a convenient and flexible service to manage payment transactions, even one-off payments, between companies, organisations and individuals, and is designed to offer advantages in terms of security, efficiency and transparency. 

The new service by EBA Clearing is integrated with the digital platform SIA EasyWay, created to support financial institutions and other payment service providers (PSPs) at European level in the management of cloud-based payments and to facilitate the consolidation of instant payments and the development of open banking services introduced by PSD2. 

Thanks to SIA's solution, it will be possible to use the request to pay service to meet the needs of the various market players who will be able to develop dedicated use cases for their end users.

"With the launch of request to pay by EBA Clearing, SIA will further strengthen the value proposition of innovative services for the development of digital payments at European level, thus contributing to the creation of an ecosystem in which all the actors - from banks to corporates, to the public sector - can implement new business models, also thanks to the opportunities offered by PSD2 regulations," stated Roberta Gobbi, director of Sales Italian Region at SIA. 

Banca Sella signs up

Banca Sella is one of the early adopters to choose SIA to subscribe to the request to pay service, through the SIA EasyWay platform it already used to manage instant payments. 

"Our subscription to the request to pay scheme is in line with Banca Sella's strategy to implement innovative solutions in the field of payments, achieving a significant improvement in end-to-end financial transactions for all customers operating in the European ecosystem," commented Andrea Massitti, head of Corporate and Small Business at Banca Sella. "The project will enable our customer companies to provide a service that aims to increase the transparency and speed of payment processes, with a high added value relating to the reduction of risks and with significant advancements in the reconciliation and governance systems of the collection cycle. The partnership with SIA, leader in payment services and infrastructures, is consolidated thanks to cooperation in the realisation of request to pay, which allows us to continue offering our customers cutting-edge, technologically advanced digital solutions."

For detailed analysis of what request to pay means for corporates, watch this CTMfile WEBchat where Jack speaks to two executives from Deutsche Bank about why this is a revolution for European payments.