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Instant Payments


What are instant payments?

Instant payments are credit transfers which are executed immediately, 24 hours a day and on any calendar day.  

Instant payments allow people to transfer funds at any time of any day within ten seconds. This is much faster compared to traditional credit transfers, which are received by payment service providers (PSPs) only during business hours and arrive at the payee’s account only by the following business day, which could take up to three calendar days.

Main benefits of instant payments

According to the European Commission, traditional credit transfers and cheques ‘lock’ almost 200 billion euro in the financial system at any given day. Instant payments unlock these funds, such that these become instantly available for economic use, either for consumption or for investment, thereby contributing to growth.  

The main benefits of instant payments are summarised herebelow:   

  • Consumers are enabled to easily transfer and receive funds within a few seconds, via online banking, mobile phones and wearables.
  • Businesses, public administrations and tax authorities are enabled to:

  • optimise the management of cash and liquidity;  

  • decrease the time needed for settling transactions and managing payments that are not yet completed;  

  • collect amounts due in real-time;  

  • make payments for the immediate delivery of goods, even outside normal business hours;

  • make salary and pension payments, especially for cases where staff is employed for ad-hoc projects and/or for the provision of services over a specified period of time, such that salary payments cover the work completed-to-date;

  • receive instantly compensation and especially with respect to the reimbursement of costs subject to insurance in cases of emergency.

  • PSPs may use instant payments as a stepping stone for developing innovative services and for strengthening their competitive position in the retail payments market.

For more information, please use the following links:

The Regulation on instant payments

On 19 March 2024, the Parliament and the Council of the European Union adopted the Instant Payments Regulation (EU) 2024/886, which makes instant payments fully available in euro to consumers and businesses holding a bank account in the European Union (EU) and in the European Economic Area (EEA) countries.   

The Instant Payments Regulation amends and modernises Regulation (EU) 260/2012 on credit transfers in euro (SEPA Regulation) and it aims at achieving the following objectives:

  1. ​​​Making instant euro payments universally available, with an obligation on EU PSPs that already offer credit transfers in euro to offer also their instant version within a defined period.
  2. Making instant euro payments affordable, with an obligation on PSPs to ensure that the price charged for instant payments in euro does not exceed the price charged for traditional, non-instant credit transfers in euro.
  3. Increasing trust in instant payments, with an obligation on providers to verify the match between the bank account number (IBAN) and the name of the beneficiary provided by the payer in order to alert the payer of a possible mistake or fraud before the payment is made.
  4. Removing friction in the processing of instant euro payments while preserving the effectiveness of screening of persons that are subject to EU sanctions, through a procedure whereby PSPs will verify at least daily their clients against EU sanctions lists, instead of screening all transactions one by one.

The Eurosystem’s layered approach for instant payments

Instant payment solutions entail different ‘layers’: a scheme layer (i.e. a set of agreed rules and technical standards for executing instant payment transactions) and, the underlying clearing and settlement layers.

The Eurosystem’s layered approach for instant payments

Scheme layer

In the EU, all instant credit transfers in euro are based on the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer scheme (SCT Inst) of the European Payments Council (EPC). Representing EU PSPs, the EPC launched the SCT Inst scheme, the key features of which entail the service being consistently available (24/7/365) and it taking no more than ten seconds for the recipient’s PSP to inform the payer’s PSP whether the funds have been received and, in the case of a successful transaction, to make the funds available to the recipient.

The Eurosystem encourages PSPs to develop instant payment solutions with pan-European reach and to promote instant payments to their clients. In line with the Eurosystem’s revised retail payments strategy, (available only in English), one of the priorities entails further strengthening of the "classic" SEPA, primarily through the full deployment of instant payments and making them the new normal.

To this end, the Eurosystem has created a set of recommendations for PSPs that also highlights the potential benefits of instant payments. For more information, please use this link (available only in English). 

Clearing layer

The Eurosystem is working closely with the industry to ensure that the clearing layer can support SCT Inst. In this respect, the Eurosystem has publicly expressed its expectations regarding the requirements that instant payments clearing infrastructures must possess, in order to be able to support at least one pan-European instant payments solution in euro.

For more information, please use this link (available only in English).

Settlement layer

TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS)

The Eurosystem has developed and offers the necessary settlement service TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS), in order for instant payments to be settled in real-time and in central bank money, in parallel to the previous payments system TARGET2, which has been replaced by an enhanced system, T2 (available only in English).

For more information regarding TIPS, please use this link (available only in English). 

Participation in TIPS-CY

The CBC – under its capacity as operator of TARGET-CY – and in order to facilitate participation in TIPS-CY, it stands ready to provide support to local authorised credit institutions and other potential participants.   

For more information, please contact us at the e-mail address target@centralbank.cy.