Representatives of the 27 funding institutions from all over Europe took part in an online demonstration of the system earlier today.

The delivery of the system and the kick-off of the testing phase mark the latest milestone in the company’s efforts to put this infrastructure service at the disposal of its future users from the earliest possible date on, in order to support their preparations for the launch of request to pay products.

This milestone follows the publication of the R2P service specifications in December 2019, which were made available to the wider community of future users and to the technical service providers and solution providers assisting them. The development of the service has been taken forward with the support of 27 funding institutions from 11 European countries.

“We are proud to deliver this key piece of core infrastructure, which is expected to significantly improve the end-to-end payment experience for end-users in the European payments ecosystem. And we are very pleased to optimally support our users in their own development plans through the timely availability of R2P,”

said Petia Niederländer, Chairman of EBA CLEARING.

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. In particular, request to pay will enable payment service providers and the broader ecosystem to create value around instant payments, for which reach is growing rapidly across Europe (see press release “EBA CLEARING’s RT1 reaches critical mass in France” of 19 June 2020).

Request to pay end-user solutions built on top of EBA CLEARING’s 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.