Benefits of sub-participation

Sub-participation is available to all branches and consolidated affiliates of a participant bank that are located in the European Economic Area (EEA).

Sub-participation enables banks to directly send and receive payments to/from all participants and sub-participants in EURO1/ STEP1. Payments sent and received by a sub-participant are included in the position of the STEP1 Participant and covered by the liquidity of the participant.

Sub-participants benefit from the same service features (cut-off times, message formats, etc.) as their STEP1 Participants.

In case of a merger or acquisition, sub-participation allows banking groups to quickly and easily include entities under one liquidity position in STEP1. The participation mode thereby enables banks to centralise their liquidity management and directly connect their branches and subsidiaries to a pan-European infrastructure for single payments.

The transactions sent by a sub-participant are included in the total payment volume of the participant. As the higher volume tiers have favourable transaction fees, the integration of sub-participant traffic may quickly lead to a significant decrease of the average price per payment for the banking group as a whole.

STEP1 can be used for intra-group payments. These payments are processed under the participant's position and are therefore liquidity-neutral in STEP1.

In order to accommodate different banking group policies with regard to end-of-day balance reporting, STEP1 offers different reporting options: 

• a decentralised approach where the total value of each sub-participant’s payments is shown as one net amount to the participant while the sub-participant receives a detailed statement 
• a centralised approach where the sub-participant’s traffic is reported in detail on the participant's statement while the sub-participant receives a consolidated statement