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Volante Technologies launches SEPA instant payments processing

Digital transformation software specialist Volante Technologies has announced its launch of end-to-end single euro payments area (SEPA) instant payments processing as an on-demand managed service on Microsoft Azure.

The company says that volante’s SEPA instant payments-as-a-service (PaaS) will provide all payment service providers (PSPs) certified access to the two principal pan-European schemes:

  • the Euro Banking Association’s EBA Clearing RT1 infrastructure (introduced in November 2017); and
  • the European Central Bank’s (ECB) TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS), which launched last November.

Access will be via the high-speed, secure messaging and low-latency SIAnet network.

The new service is powered by VolPay, Volante’s ecosystem of business services for the entire payments lifecycle and allows any market participant to send and receive instant payments through TIPS and RT1, “avoiding costly and time-consuming in-house deployment of real-time payments (RTP) infrastructure projects,” according to the company.

“Institutions can instead focus on accelerating the delivery of new services to their end-customers, and speeding onboarding across a variety of retail and commercial use cases,” the company adds. “The service’s multi-network architecture ensures that institutions can easily support both today’s SEPA instant payments networks and future ones, without onerous rework.”

An ideal fit

Volante quotes David Bannister, senior analyst at Aite Group, who comments: “Managed service approaches are an ideal fit for instant payments.

“They allow providers to go live with very low volumes while they fine tune their business cases, but still preserve their ability to keep up with market demand as volumes rise. Because instant payments are new, no migration from existing systems is required, significantly reducing implementation times.”

Domenico Scaffidi, Volante’s director of business development, added, “Demand from European institutions for rapid access to instant payments capabilities is on the rise. We are excited to be expanding our payment processing managed service with SEPA instant payments capabilities to meet this demand and to be certified by SIAnet as a multi-network solution delivering more choice for our customers.”

Janet Lewis, VP worldwide financial services, Microsoft, said, “Volante’s cloud-based payments services provide significant benefits to clients, and we are delighted they have chosen Microsoft Azure to host their SEPA instant PaaS.”

Last October, Volante announced that FIMBank Malta had signed as its first customer for the-then newly-launched cloud-based VolPay-as-a-Service offering.

Coup for SIA

In a separate announcement, Italy’s SIA confirmed that in partnership with Colt Technology Services, it has won a tender commissioned by the ECB for the provisioning of connectivity services allowing European central and commercial banks, central depositories, automated clearing houses and other PSPs to connect directly to Eurosystem market infrastructures through a single access interface Eurosystem Single Market Infrastructure Gateway, aka ESMIG.  

The concession granted to SIA and Colt as network service providers for the ESMIG, commencing November 2021, will enable key organisations in the European financial system to access the platform for the settlement of large-value payments TARGET2, the TIPS instant payments settlement service, the securities settlement platform TARGET2-Securities (T2S), the Eurosystem Collateral Management System (ECMS) and possibly other new services and applications.

Commenting on the award, SIA said that ESMIG is a fundamental component in the implementation of the TARGET2 and TARGET2-Securities consolidation project, among the key proposals of Eurosystem’s ‘2020 Vision’ strategic plan for the evolution of market infrastructures. This project will entail savings for both those financial institutions that require more secure and reliable functionalities to be made available, and for the Eurosystem itself through reduced operating costs.

“The partnership between SIA and Colt, signed originally in 2012 on the occasion of the TARGET2-Securities call for tenders, has led to the successful attainment of one of the two 10year licenses for ESMIG,” added SIA. “It was due to the organisations’ high technological profile and strong international presence, which saw the two companies being awarded this business.”

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