European Parliament Approves Mandatory ‘Instant Payments’ Bill, Allowing Euro Transfers in Ten Seconds

The European Parliament has approved a bill that makes support for ‘instant payments’ mandatory. This should soon allow European banks to process euro payments among themselves within ten seconds, without additional transaction costs.

Members of the European Parliament voted on Wednesday with a large majority with the bill, with 599 in favor, 7 against and 35 abstentions. The new rules will soon come into effect. This happens twenty days after the rules have been published in the EU Official Journal. Member States will then have twelve months to implement the legislation.

The new rules amend the existing Single Euro Payments Area rules. The new law will apply to banks and other payment services in the European Union. Under the new rules, transactions in euros must be completed within ten seconds, regardless of the day or time and without additional fees. In addition, the sender must know within ten seconds whether the money has arrived at the recipient.

There has been a system for instant payments in Europe for years, although not all banks within the EU already support this standard. This payment protocol, that too SEPA Instant Credit Transfer is mentioned, makes it possible to process payments within Eurozone countries in a maximum of ten seconds. In the Netherlands, seventeen payment service providers already support this, including many large bankssuch as ABN Amro, bunq, ING, KNAB, Rabobank and de Volksbank, including SNS, ASN and RegioBank.

2024-02-07 16:33:15
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