Aruba’s entire banking community has switched to Instant Payments (IP) using the Clearing and Settlement Mechanism (IP CSM) of the Centrale Bank van Aruba (CBA), which was implemented by equensWorldline SE, a subsidiary of Worldline [Euronext: WLN], the European leader in the payments and transactional services industry. The implementation of this new payment infrastructure – which is led by the CBA – is unique because the Caribbean island switched completely from traditional batch payments to instant payments. After this successful switch, all interbank payments in Aruban florin initiated in Aruba can be instantly processed 24/7/365. The IP CSM is fully compliant with international standards and ISO20022.

A few years ago, the Centrale Bank van Aruba (CBA) initiated a project to modernize its payment infrastructure. This was a challenging project, due to several reasons. A major challenge lay in the fact that the entire banking community of all domestic and international banks in Aruba had to switch to instant payments in a 'big bang'. The CBA partnered with equensWorldline because of its decades-long experience with interbank payments processing and its proven track record with real-time payments processing, as the largest instant payments processor in the Europe.

The CBA is pleased with its collaboration with equensWorldline and the commercial banks as equensWorldline understood the needs of the Aruban community, and tailored the implementation of instant payments to its specific situation.

Michael Steinbach, CEO at equensWorldline, says: “With the go-live in Aruba we established an important milestone for our company at global level. This is fully in line with our global ambitions, as the market in which we operate is clearly no longer European, but global. Following this first step in Aruba, we will continue to further expand our international footprint, inside and outside of Europe. Furthermore, this project shows once again that instant payments are truly becoming the new normal, not only at European level but also on a global scale.”