Iberpay, at the forefront of instant payments in Europe

In November 2017, Iberpay launched the first domestic interbank infrastructure in Europe to process SEPA Instant credit transfers under the EPC's SCT Inst scheme. Likewise, Iberpay launched the first connection with the pan-European services EBA Clearing’s RT1 (November 2017) and Eurosystem’s TIPS of the (November 2018), to guarantee a maximum reachability in the SEPA area from the very first moment.

Iberpay's interbank infrastructure offers a domestic interbank service for SCT Inst processing, and two pan-European connections to process SCT Inst with entities in the SEPA area: Link with TIPS and Link with RT1.

The infrastructure also processes transactions in real-time under three different protocols: web services, SOAP and REST, EBICS and SWIFT-AGI, that position Iberpay as a clear reference in the European context and as one of the most advanced and innovative payment systems today.

The success in the launch of Instant credit transfers in Spain has been mainly due to the great majority of Spanish entities adhering to the EPC’s SCT Inst scheme and to Iberpay's SCT Inst services:

• The domestic service already has 93 entities adhered, which represents 98% of the Spanish payment market share.
• Link to TIPS service (ECB), which has 87 entities connected (98% of the Spanish payments market's share).
• Link to RT1 service (EBA Clearing), which has 87 entities connected (98% of the Spanish payments market's share).

These services enable entities to channel all their SCT Inst transactions, whether for domestic or with the rest of the SEPA area, through a single connection with Iberpay's platform, reducing any additional technical, operational or cost efforts.

Since November 21, 2017, Spanish citizens benefit from a new way of sending and receiving money instantly, both to and from other Spanish bank accounts, and to and from accounts in other European countries, by using instant credit transfers.

An instant credit transfer is a transfer of funds that reaches the destination bank account in less than 10 seconds, as defined by the pan-European SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) scheme, published by the EPC in November 2016 and which came into force on 21 November 2017. This maximum target time has been reduced down to 1.5 seconds within the Spanish Payment System (SNCE).

The main characteristics of these instant credit transfers are:

• Speed of transfer of funds: the time it takes for money to get from one current account to another is reduced from one business day that ordinary credit transfers take, to less than 10 seconds. In the Spanish Payment System, these Instant credit transfers are currently processed between banks within 0.76 to 1.95 seconds, on average and depending on the service, up to the point where the beneficiary of the transfer obtains the funds in his current account.
• Maximum amounts per transfer: from 1 July 2020, the maximum amount in general that can be transferred is 100,000 euros (until then it had been 15,000 euros). Banks can reduce this maximum amount transferable depending on each means, service or customer profile.
• Availability: the service works and is available to clients 24 hours a day every day of the year. Delays due to weekend and holiday closures that characterize ordinary transfers have been therefore eliminated. In addition, Instant credit transfers can be made through internet banking services or through applications on mobile devices and value-added services such as Bizum.
• Only available in euros: at the moment, there is no possibility of instant credit transfers to be made in other currencies.
• Access to the service: most of entities that operate in Spain have adhered in this service provided by Iberpay (over 98% of the payment market share), so that bank customers can send and receive Instant credit transfers to practically all current accounts operating in Spain.
• No cancellations: unlike ordinary credit transfers, which generally allow a time window for cancellation of the transfer, in the case of Instant credit transfers this option does not exist since funds are sent almost instantly. The only possibility to cancel an instant credit transfer is to request the entity to send a request for recall to the beneficiary bank.
• Cost: the cost of sending Instant credit transfers varies depending on each bank: while there are entities that maintain the rates applicable to ordinary credit transfers, others have set a different price, usually higher, according to the significant service improvement and added value offered to customers.

Thanks to the advanced and innovative interbank infrastructure launched by Iberpay and the massive adhesion of entities, Spain has become the first country in the euro area in terms of volumes processed, surpassing the figures of 588 million instant credit transfers processed in 2022, worth over 85,000 million euros.

Iberpay's CICLOM platform processes over 1,5 million instant credit transfers a day on average, worth over 226 million euros, and SCT Inst represent 43% share of the total credit transfers processed daily in the Spanish Payment System.