Set for launch in November 2018, the gateway builds on Swift's experience in developing a national real-time payment system for the Australian market, which is slated for go-live later this year.

Christian Sarafidis, chief marketing officer, Swift, comments: “Our instant payments strategy has delivered early successes in Australia and I am confident it will bring significant benefit to our customers globally. Initially, the instant payments gateway will provide access to multiple instant payments operators across Europe, and then the plan is to further expand into other markets.”

The service can be used stand-alone, but it can also be integrated with Swift’s Alliance Messaging Hub, which enables the processing of financial message flows and integration with back office systems.

“Our instant payments gateway is designed to meet the challenges our customers face and forms the cornerstone of our future footprint, in particular enabling access to the forthcoming combined T2/TIPS/T2S platform,” concludes Sarafidis.

Banks across Europe are gearing up for a new era of real-time payments as multiple markets prepare to switch over to new instant payments systems. EBA Clearing, which is developing its own pan-European infrastructure platform RT1 for instant payments, today issued a white paper addressing considerations for a successful roll-out and ramp-up of real-time payments across Europe.

“At infrastructure level, ease of access is key and an instant payment system needs flexible participation options,” says Erwin Kulk, head of service development and management, EBA Clearing. “System reliability is part of this story too, as are efficient liquidity management mechanisms. Recognising this, we have, for instance, included automated tools and reports in our RT1 solution to make the system as liquidity-efficient as possible."

The challenges of introducing instant payment systems will be debated in depth in Dublin next week at EBAday 2017, the continent's leading payments and transaction banking event organised by Finextra and the Euro Banking Association.

Download the full white paper from EBA Clearing: