EBA CLEARING announced today that it has issued user specifications for new functionality that will help its RT1 Participants manage instant payment flows across the RT1 and TIPS payment systems. RT1 users will be able to leverage their existing set-up with the improved Instructing Party Functionality in order to meet the upcoming reach requirements for the Eurosystem’s TIPS platform and to optimally reap the opportunities the two pan-European infrastructures offer.

“The future TIPS set-up will offer consolidated liquidity management opportunities. Users of the enhanced Instructing Party Functionality benefit from a single interface for their transaction flows and concentrate liquidity for their payments settling in RT1 and TIPS in a single place. This will simplify their daily handling of instant payments and related internal network and system arrangements, and allow them to optimally leverage their infrastructure investments,” said Erwin Kulk, Head of Service Development and Management at EBA CLEARING.

From late 2021 on, payment service providers (PSPs) adhering to the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) Scheme of the European Payments Council must be reachable via TIPS for SCT Inst transactions. They will also need to make sure that they can fund and defund through TIPS the positions they hold in the different clearing and settlement mechanisms they participate in.

Users of EBA CLEARING’s pan-European instant payment system, RT1, will be able to rely on its enhanced Instructing Party Functionality to satisfy both requirements. The Instructing Party Functionality has been in place since 2018, when TIPS went live. It allows PSPs that are connected to both systems to use RT1 for sending and receiving SCT Inst transactions to and from TIPS.

As part of the changes to be introduced by the Eurosystem in December 2021, the technical account for RT1 settlement, which today is operated in TARGET2, will migrate to TIPS. This change will make the RT1 technical account accessible for participants 24/7, which will further facilitate their liquidity management.

RT1 offers payment service providers in the Single Euro Payments Area a state-of-the-art, real-time payment processing facility operating around the clock on any day of the year for payments in line with the SCT Inst Scheme of the European Payments Council (EPC). Currently, over 1 million payments are settled in RT1 -- in real-time and with immediate finality, in around one second, across all corners of Europe.

RT1 is open to any account-servicing payment service provider (AS-PSP) adhering to the EPC SCT Inst Scheme. A variety of options to interact with the system allow any type of EPC SCT Inst Scheme adherent to access the RT1 infrastructure in the way that best suits their needs.