Paris and Sydney, 25 October 2018
EBA CLEARING’s real-time payment system RT1 passes 5-million-transaction mark
11 months after go-live, the pan-European instant payment platform reaches PSPs in 12 countries, processing over 70,000 real-time payments in euro per day
Over the past month, instant payments have seen a strong uptake in the Baltic countries in particular
Eleven months after its go-live, EBA CLEARING’s instant payment system RT1 has hit the 5-million-transaction mark. The Company announced the passing of this milestone during a session at the Sibos conference today. RT1 went live as the first pan-European real-time payment infrastructure system on the launch date of the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) Scheme of the European Payments Council on 21 November 2017; the system processes euro real-time payments in line with this scheme.
RT1 has been engaged in substantial onboarding activities since its launch and currently reaches over 1,000 payment service providers (PSPs) in 12 countries through its 32 participant institutions. Over the past month, the system has seen its average daily volumes more than triple. RT1 currently handles over 70,000 transactions per day and registered a new peak record on 15 October 2018 with more than 100,000 instant payments processed in one day. This recent volume uptake has mainly been fuelled by instant payment roll-out activities in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
“The current ramp-up of instant payments across the Baltics responds to the need of our customers for fast and innovative payment services. We look forward to seeing market penetration of this new instrument further grow over the next few months and expect real-time payments to eventually become the ‘new normal’ for our customers – for the benefit of their local and Europe-wide payment business and the overall economy,”
said Allan Parik, Chairman of the Management Board, AS SEB Pank.
“The Baltic communities have been among the pioneers of electronic payments in terms of efficiency and speed since the pre-SEPA days. It is important that we continue to provide convenient digital solutions to our customers. With our 3.3 million Swedbank customers in the Baltics, we are now glad to add new powerful SEPA tools to the scope of our services. We hope that our digitally minded customers appreciate this,”
said Charlotte Elsnitz, Head of Swedbank Baltic Banking.
“The recent uptake of SCT Inst volumes in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania testifies to the attractiveness of our RT1 platform at a pan-European level, across different communities and multiple use cases.
We are pleased to see that the system reliably performs in line with our expectations: nearly all RT1 transactions are processed within a few seconds. This is the case not only for domestic payments but also for transactions where the counterparts are located in different corners of Europe and several processing hubs are involved.”
said Hays Littlejohn, CEO of EBA CLEARING.
RT1 provides payment service providers in the Single Euro Payments Area with a real-time payment processing facility operating around the clock on any day of the year.
The service is open to any account-servicing payment provider (AS-PSP) adhering to the EPC SCT Inst Scheme. Different options to interact with the system allow any type of user access to the RT1 platform.
About EBA CLEARING
EBA CLEARING is a provider of pan-European payment infrastructure solutions. Founded in 1998, the Company is owned by 51 of the major banks operating in Europe and is based on a country-neutral governance model. The payment systems of EBA CLEARING are pan-European by design and desire: they are developed in close co-operation with the Company’s multinational user community and best-of-breed technology partners.
EBA CLEARING manages and operates the payment services EURO1, STEP1, STEP2 and RT1. Both EURO1 and STEP2 have been classified as systemically important payment systems (SIPS) by the European Central Bank. The pan-European real-time payment platform RT1 went live in November 2017 and processes euro instant payments complying with the European Payments Council’s SEPA Instant Credit Transfer Scheme.
The list of RT1 participants and a document including all payment service providers addressable through the system are available at:
https://www.ebaclearing.eu/services/instant-payments/participants/
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