12 April 2016

EPC: Start of the public consultation for first pan-European scheme providing customers with euro instant credit transfers

The EPC launched the public consultation on the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer scheme. The proposed scheme is the first in the world to be interoperable in a region as large as SEPA and is a response to European customer needs for faster payments.

It will be a turning point in making pan-European instant credit transfers in euro a reality.

All payment stakeholders including Payment Service Providers (PSPs), as well as end users and technical players are encouraged to participate in the three-month European Payments Council’s(EPC) public consultation, designed to ensure that the scheme reflects market needs.

Key features of the optional Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) scheme are:

• The geographical scope of the scheme spans across the 34 countries which are within the scope of the current SEPA schemes.
• The scheme is based as much as possible on the existing SEPA Credit Transfer scheme and still includes many of its successful features. This has been designed to facilitate a faster and cheaper implementation for scheme participants.
• It applies to credit transfers made in euro, up to an initial maximum amount of 15,000 euro per transaction.
• The money will be available on the account of the payee within ten seconds.
• Individual scheme participants can agree bilaterally or multilaterally (e.g., within a specific SEPA country) on a lower maximum execution time and/or a higher maximum amount if they wish.
• All adhering scheme participants will have to be technically capable to process the SCT Inst transactions on a 24/7/365 basis.

Stakeholders wishing to participate must take note that the public consultation will last three months and end on 10 July.

The finalised scheme rulebook will be published by the EPC in November 2016 and will be implemented one year later. In November 2017, all live scheme participants will be ready to propose the first SCT Inst transaction solutions based on the finalised EPC SCT Inst scheme to their customers in Europe.

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© EPC