The new joiners brought the total number of RT1 participants to 28 and expanded the reach of the system from around 600 to over 1,000 addressable payment service providers.

With the 10 July 2018 joining window, RT1 has particularly increased its reach in Germany, where Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW) and Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen (Helaba) connected the savings bank sector with 385 payment service providers to the pan-European platform.

“We are very pleased to support the German savings bank sector in offering instant payments to its 50 million customers. Our connection to RT1 enables these institutions to be among the early movers on euro real-time payments at European level and the first sector in Germany to integrally roll out instant payment products at a mass scale.” said Wolf-Rüdiger Braun, Head of Division Operation Services at LBBW.

“Processing SCT Inst transactions requires not only new IT infrastructure but also liquidity management and other support services operating 24/7. As one of two processing hubs for the German savings bank sector, Helaba has successfully risen to the challenge of providing our institutions with the seamless and carefree processing services they need to ensure that their customers can make payments with instant finality during and outside of their bank’s operating hours.” said Markus Jörg, Head of Cash Management at Helaba.

“RT1 has been designed to fulfil the needs of payment service providers and their customers all over Europe. To this effect, the platform offers great flexibility in terms of participation and access options and is use case-agnostic. The growing reach of the system testifies to the success of this approach and we have further developments in the pipeline to evolve RT1 functionality in line with user needs as SCT Inst volumes continue to ramp up across SEPA,” said Hays Littlejohn, CEO of EBA CLEARING.

RT1 went live on the launch date of the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) Scheme of the European Payments Council (EPC) on 21 November 2017. The system provides payment service providers in the Single Euro Payments Area with a real-time payment processing facility operating around the clock on any day of the year.

The service is open to any account-servicing payment service provider (ASPSP) adhering to the EPC SCT Inst Scheme. Different options to interact with the system allow any type of PSP access to the RT1 platform. -