EBA CLEARING’s instant payment system RT1 hits 500,000-transaction mark

right to left: Gottfried Leibbrand, CEO of SWIFT; Hays Littlejohn, CEO of EBA CLEARING; Erkki Poutiainen, Chairman of EBA CLEARING; Nicola Cordone, Deputy CEO, SVP Global Business Solutions, SIA.

  • Three months after go-live, the pan-European platform handles more than 10,000 real-time payments in euro per day 
  • Over 95 % of the transactions are processed in less than three seconds 

EBA CLEARING’s pan-European instant payment system RT1 has processed more than half a million transactions in the first three months of its operations. The system passed the 500,000-transaction milestone on 19 February 2018; RT1 went live on the launch date of the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) Scheme of the European Payments Council on 20 November 2017.

The transaction highlight was part of an RT1 update that the Company’s CEO Hays Littlejohn shared with representatives of the EBA CLEARING user community at a celebration event held yesterday in Brussels to mark the delivery of the first pan-European system enabling the exchange of SCT Inst transactions. In the three months since its go-live, RT1 has processed transactions with a total value of EUR 300 million; the platform currently handles over 10,000 transactions per day on average. At present, RT1 extends reach to over 500 payment service providers from 10 EU countries, which are addressable via the 20 participants connected to the service at this stage.

“RT1 has had a very promising start and is at the heart of the instant payment ramp-up across SEPA. We are pleased to see that the system continues on a successful path following its smooth and timely delivery in a collaborative effort fuelled by our pan-European user community and supported by SIA and SWIFT,”
said Erkki Poutiainen, Chairman of EBA CLEARING.

“We are very pleased with the performance of the system: over 95 % of the transactions sent via RT1 are processed within three seconds. Driven by the active experience of our participants and the expected volume uptake, we plan two further releases in 2018, which will expand connectivity options and introduce additional functionality,”
said Hays Littlejohn, CEO of EBA CLEARING.

RT1 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 provider (AS-PSP) adhering to the EPC SCT Inst Scheme. Different options to interact with the system allow any type of user access to the RT1 platform.

EBA CLEARING is a provider of pan-European payment infrastructure solutions. Founded in 1998, the Company is owned by 51 of the major banks operating in Europe and is based on a country-neutral governance model. The payment systems of EBA CLEARING are pan-European by design and desire: they are developed in close co-operation with the Company’s multinational user community and best-of-breed technology partners.

EBA CLEARING manages and operates the payment services EURO1, STEP1, STEP2 and RT1. Both EURO1 and STEP2 have been classified as systemically important payment systems (SIPS) by the European Central Bank. The pan-European real-time payment platform RT1 went live in November 2017 and processes euro instant payments complying with the European Payments Council’s SEPA Instant Credit Transfer Scheme.

The list of RT1 participants and a document including all payment service providers addressable through the system are available here.