Europe is actively rolling out Instant Payments. Additional legislation in the pipeline.
Based on the European standard - the ‘SEPA Instant Credit Transfer Scheme Rulebook’ published by the European Payments Council (EPC) - payment service providers are offering Instant Payments in euro in the SEPA zone since its introduction in November 2017.
Participation (adherence to this SEPA standard) is optional for now, therefore not all banks and their accounts are reachable for Instant Payments. For a complete overview of the participants please check the monthly update on the EPC website.
Instant Payments are processed between banks via a Clearing and Settlement Mechanism (CSM). Within the SEPA area there are many of the CSMs and some of them also support Instant Payments. When banks are connected to the same CSM they are able to exchange Instant Payments.
See the participating banks for an overview of the CSMs to which the Dutch banks are connected. To ensure that all participating banks are interconnected, all these banks are (additionally) required to connect to TIPS; the European Central Bank's (ECB) Instant Payments processing system.
To stimulate the further roll-out of Instant Payments in Europe, legislation is in preparation requiring banks to at least be able to receive and maybe also offer Instant Payments according to the European standard. Details of this legislation is work in progress by the European Commission and therefore not formally available yet.
Instant Payments in The Netherlands are implemented according to the SEPA standard. Two additional features are implemented on top of this standard, specifically for the Dutch market:
- the Instant Payment transaction will take no more than 5 seconds, where the European standard caters for 10 seconds
- any amount is possible for an Instant Payment within The Netherlands; for European (x-border transactions) a maximum amount limit of
€ 100,000 per instant payment is applicable.
These features are specified in the NL Standards.