The joint launch of these new infrastructure services took place today, on the day of the entry into force of the new SEPA scheme.

Pan-European SRTP processing
EBA CLEARING and IBERPAY have made a significant effort to offer this service to potential users right from the launch of the scheme, being the first European infrastructure providers prepared to offer this new functionality. PSPs and other service providers adhering to this new SEPA scheme may now exchange SRTP messages end to end, in split seconds and across Europe, thanks to the connection between the real-time messaging systems of EBA CLEARING and IBERPAY.

This important milestone provides the missing piece to support a multitude of use cases that users could offer their clients around the clock, many of which will rely on instant payments.

What is a Request to Pay?
The SEPA Request-to-Pay Scheme is the set of operating rules, messages and technical elements that allows a Payee to request the initiation of a payment from a Payer before the exchange of the funds (money). The development of the scheme was taken forward by the EPC following a call to action by the Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB) in November 2018 to analyse and prepare the concrete and rapid exploitation of the request to pay functionality.

Request to Pay is not a payment instrument, but a way to request a payment initiation (pull payment). Request to Pay services are available 24 hours, every single day. They improve the payment process by adding a message exchange, which takes place before the actual payment (SCT or SCT Inst) and includes:
1. A request to the Payer for a payment.
2. The acceptation or refusal of this request by the Payer.
The information delivered as part of this request to pay exchange, allows the Payer to identify the Payee and makes it easier for the Payee to identify and reconcile the following payment.

Request to Pay as enabler for instant and digital payments: Use cases
Request to Pay is envisaged to evolve further over time and has been identified by the European Commission and the Eurosystem in their respective retail payments strategies as having the potential to add value to the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) Scheme as well as to improve the usability and support the uptake of instant and digital payment solutions.

The importance of the launch of Request to Pay is closely related to several use cases, which have already been identified by the industry, such as: unpaid or returned direct debits, e-commerce payments, substitution of other payment instruments, public administration payments, payment of e-invoices and even at point of sale.

Mr. Juan Luis Encinas, Managing Director of IBERPAY, expressed: “IBERPAY is strongly committed to playing a leading role in instant and digital payments and we believe that the launch of our Request to Pay service from the very beginning is a very important milestone for that. IBERPAY is extremely pleased to collaborate with EBA CLEARING with the aim to assure pan-European reachability for the SRTP Scheme and to better serve its users”.

Mr. Hays Littlejohn, CEO of EBA CLEARING, said: “We are pleased to see the Spanish community connected to our R2P Service from day one of the SRTP Scheme. IBERPAY is the first infrastructure provider extending R2P access to its user community. This supports our objective to build full pan-European reach for Request to Pay and ensure interoperability between the underlying infrastructures”.