Among the institutions funding the new EBA CLEARING infrastructure solution, Intesa Sanpaolo is the first one to connect to the test system. The new payment infrastructure will provide a real-time payment processing engine working around the clock on any day of the year.

Starting from November 2017, account-servicing payment service providers (AS-PSPs) from all over SEPA will be able to use this highly flexible solution for payment products in euro that are fully compliant with the European Payments Council’s SCT Inst Scheme and in line with the ISO 20022 global messaging standards for real-time payments.

Mr. Stefano Favale, Head of Global Transaction Banking at INTESA SANPAOLO Group commented: “We are strongly committed to playing a leading role in the future of payments for the benefit of our customers. Both retail and corporate customers will be able to send credit transfers in real time across Europe, potentially reaching over 500 million European citizens and companies in a seamless way - and they will need nothing aside from their current account to do so. The end-to-end process between the originator and beneficiary accounts will take no more than 10 seconds. The payments will be irrevocable and settled in real time subject to pre-funding in central bank funds.”

Mr. Enrico Bagnasco, Head of IT at INTESA SANPAOLO added: “We have successfully started user testing for our November connection to this instant payment system thanks to our upgraded payment hub. We have been significantly investing in our payment architecture and applications over the past few years, in order to be more and more innovative and agile and to be able to take advantage of the new opportunities arising in this business,” while Mr. Luca Faussone Head of Operations commented: “24/7/365 system performance will require a new operations model and approach and we are making it a top priority to deliver this enhanced service level for our customers.”

Mr. Hays Littlejohn, CEO of EBA CLEARING, said: “Intesa Sanpaolo is the first future participant to connect directly to our test system and is amongst the 25 users currently preparing to go live this year. Together with those institutions that are planning to connect to the system in 2018, these early joiners represent nearly 85% of the SEPA Credit Transfer traffic processed by our STEP2 system today. More and more banks and service providers are developing services around our new platform, and we are confident that we will see a positive evolution of the reach of the service from the start of the ramp-up period on.”