Instant payments implementation – current status in February 2023

In February 2023, we will once again evaluate the current participation of financial institutions and payment service providers in instant payments implementation, and will particularly assess the relevance of real-time SEPA transfers in interbank payments. As background information for more in-depth information, you will find the essential features of SEPA instant credit transfers in our article SEPA Instant Credit Transfer: Transfers up to € 100K in 10 seconds.

Highlights from February 2023 briefly summarized

• The proportion of SCT participants in the entire SEPA area who are also SCTInst participants has increased by circa 1% to 27% in the last 2 months.
• February 1, 2023: The European Central Bank supports the EU Commission’s proposal to regulate instant payments and explains this in an official Opinion of the European Central Bank.

Instant payments implementation: Comparison of SCT Inst vs. SCT in the SEPA area

Based on the data from ECB, from EBA Clearing and the Bundesbank’s directory of available payment service providers, the total number of payment service providers participating in SCT in the SEPA countries (measured using their BIC bank codes) is set in relation to the number of those opted for SEPA instant payments implementation. The following overview shows the BIC bank code count per country for SCT Inst in relation to SCT for the countries of the SEPA area.

To explain the key figure Ratio SCTInst/SCT BIC-Bankcodes:

1. A ratio of 100% for a country means that all SCT participating BIC bank codes also participate in SCT Inst.
2. A ratio of 0% for a country means that no SCT participating BIC also participates in SCT Inst.

Instant payments implementation: Ratio of the number of SCT Instant participants to SCT (counted by unique BIC bank codes) per SEPA country in February 2023

Instant payments implementation: Number of BIC bank code participants in TIPS and RT1

The following figure shows the number of BIC bank codes participating in TIPS and RT1 in the period from May 2020 to February 2023:

Instant payments implementation: Number of BIC bank codes connected to TIPS or RT1 in the period May 2020 – February 2023 (data sources: EZB, EBA Clearing)

Current transaction statistics of EBA Clearing

The figure below shows the average daily SEPA Instant Payment transaction volume processed via RT1 from January 2020 to February 2023:

Instant payments implementation: Average daily SCT Inst transaction volume in 2020-2023

Are you as a bank interested in software solutions for instant payment implementation?

CPG.instant as a software solution for connecting core banking systems to TIPS or RT1 in interbank payments

Among other things, we offer high-performance software solutions for processing SCT Inst transfers, which allow your bank to flexibly connect one or more core banking systems and clear SEPA instant payments accordingly via interfaces to TIPS or RT1.

If you have any questions or suggestions or you are interested in the topic of payment transactions, instant payment and related software products, please do not hesitate to contact us.

This article is part of a bi-monthly series and appears in our blog category on SEPA instant payments.

External data sources:

• ECB TIPS facts (01.02.2023)
• EBA Clearing RT1 participants (07.02.2023)
• Bundesbank Verzeichnis der erreichbaren Zahlungsdienstleister (20.02.2023)