The EU’s SEPA framework required banks and payment providers to use common formats and rules for euro credit transfers and direct debits. This standardisation reduced fragmentation and created the technical and legal base that later made cross-border instant payments more feasible.
The Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB), chaired by the ECB, warned that emerging “instant payment” solutions could create closed, non-interoperable silos. It pushed the market to build instant payments on top of SEPA achievements so that new services would work across Europe, not just within national networks.
The ECB Governing Council decided to develop TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS), a new service to settle instant payments in central bank money. This aimed to support pan-European reachability and reduce the risk that multiple instant-payment infrastructures would split the market.
The European Payments Council (EPC) launched the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) scheme, setting common rules for euro instant credit transfers across SEPA. The scheme’s target is near-immediate payment completion and 24/7/365 availability, enabling a consistent customer experience across borders when banks join.
EBA CLEARING’s RT1 infrastructure went live as a pan-European clearing and settlement mechanism supporting SCT Inst payments. RT1 gave banks an operational rail to exchange instant payments, helping move SCT Inst from a rulebook into real-world processing across multiple countries.
TIPS became operational, offering settlement of instant payments in central bank money, around the clock. The ECB positioned TIPS as a pan-European option to support instant payments across Europe and help avoid market fragmentation, with the first transactions processed on launch day.
After the first year of operation, the SCT Inst scheme had broadened well beyond its initial rollout, reflecting growing bank and payment service provider participation. This growth mattered because instant payments only become widely useful when many accounts are reachable across countries and institutions.
The SCT Inst scheme raised its default maximum amount to €100,000. Increasing the limit supported more business-to-business and higher-value use cases, helping instant payments compete with traditional transfers for a broader set of everyday transactions.
The European Commission published a legislative proposal to make instant payments in euro widely available, affordable, and secure across the EU and EEA. The proposal signaled a shift from relying mainly on voluntary uptake toward using regulation to speed adoption and reduce inconsistencies between countries.
The EU adopted Regulation (EU) 2024/886, amending the SEPA Regulation and other laws to promote instant credit transfers in euro. The regulation aimed to address barriers to full rollout—such as uneven availability and operational constraints—by setting clearer requirements for payment service providers.
Regulation (EU) 2024/886 entered into force, starting the countdown to phased compliance deadlines. This mattered for rollout because it set a legal pathway from partial, uneven market adoption toward broader coverage and more consistent service expectations across the EU/EEA.
A first set of obligations under the Instant Payments Regulation became applicable, requiring many payment service providers to meet new operational expectations on a fixed timeline. This milestone marked the transition from the 2017–2020 “rollout era” (largely voluntary scheme adoption and infrastructure build-out) toward a more enforceable, EU-wide completion phase for instant payments.
SEPA Instant Credit Transfer rollout across Europe (2017–2020)