EBA Clearing announced today the delivery of specifications for its pan-European request to pay (R2P) infrastructure solution. The specifications have been created with the support of 27 financial institutions from 11 countries, which are funding the development of the solution. These specifications will be made available to the wider community of future users of the solution and to the technical service providers and solution providers supporting them.
The development of the solution is on track for a go-live in November 2020 and will fully align with the request to pay scheme that is currently being delivered by the European Payments Council (EPC).
“We are very pleased to share the specifications of our R2P solution with interested payment service providers and their suppliers almost a year ahead of the go-live of the service. With the speedy delivery of these specs and the open and transparent approach for sharing them, we hope to further contribute to the creation of a forward-looking pan-European payments ecosystem taking full advantage of real-time messaging.
PSPs and payment operators across Europe have put in a lot of effort to create both critical mass and pan-European reach for instant payments and request to pay will be a crucial tool to leverage these rails for innovative and sustainable end-user solutions,” said Erwin Kulk, Head of Service Development and Management, EBA CLEARING.
Request to pay is considered a key element in an evolving payments landscape. A pan-European request to pay solution will be an enabler for PSPs and their customers to realise the full potential of instant payments. Request to pay services built on top of such a messaging infrastructure can increase certainty, transparency and convenience of payment processes, for instance by speeding up the end-to-end process, reducing risk and easing reconciliation.
Scheme-related work on the request to pay functionality is ongoing at the level of the European Payments Council (EPC) further to the delivery in November, in response to an invitation of the Euro Retail Payments Board, of an analysis of the request to pay functionality and a proposed way forward for the creation of a request to pay scheme. EBA CLEARING contributes to these efforts as part of the Request-To-Pay Multi-Stakeholder Group of the EPC and will align its solution with the EPC work.
A pan-European request to pay approach is seen as the missing piece of the puzzle for market players to create innovative payment products and services for their customers that leverage real-time messaging, the SEPA schemes and existing cost-efficient payment infrastructures, and that can be used across Europe.