EBA Clearing and Iberpay revealed on Tuesday (June 15, 2021) that they have introduced two interoperable services to handle messages and offer functionalities that comply with the updated SEPA Request-to-Pay Scheme (SRTP) developed by the European Payments Council (EPC).
The introduction of these infrastructure services took place on Tuesday, which is actually the day of the entry of the new SEPA scheme.
EBA Clearing and Iberpay have made a considerable effort to provide this service to clients right from the launch of the scheme. They claim to be the first European infrastructure providers that are ready to provide this new feature.
Payment service providers or PSPs and other service providers complying with the updated SEPA scheme are now able to exchange SRTP messages end-to-end, within seconds and across Europe, because of the connection between real-time messaging systems of EBA Clearing and Iberpay.
This key milestone offers the missing piece to support various use-cases that may help clients who rely on instant payments.
The SEPA Request-to-Pay Scheme is the set of operating rules, messages and technical elements that lets a Payee request the initiation of a payment from a Payer prior to the exchange of the funds.
The implementation of the scheme was supported by the EPC after a call to action by the Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB) in November 2018 to start using the request to pay capability.
Request to Pay isn’t actually a payment instrument. It’s a way to request a payment initiation (pull payment). Request to Pay services are offered 24 hours, 7 days a week. They aim to enhance the payment process by adding a message exchange, which occurs before the payment (SCT or SCT Inst) and includes:
- A request to the Payer for a payment.
- The acceptation or refusal of this request by the Payer.
- The information delivered as part of this request to pay exchange, allows the Payer to identify the Payee and makes it easier for the Payee to identify and reconcile the following payment.
Request to Pay should further improve with ongoing developments and has been identified by the European Commission and the Eurosystem in their retail payments plans as having the potential to add value to the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) Scheme and to also improve the usability while supporting the adoption of instant and virtual payments.
Request to Pay may be used to support unpaid or returned direct debits, digital commerce payments, substitution of other payment instruments, public administration payments, payment of e-invoices and even at point of sale.
Juan Luis Encinas, MD at Iberpay, stated:
“Iberpay is strongly committed to playing a leading role in instant and digital payments and we believe that the launch of our Request to Pay service from the very beginning is a very important milestone for that. IBERPAY is extremely pleased to collaborate with EBA CLEARING with the aim to assure pan-European reachability for the SRTP Scheme and to better serve its users.”
Hays Littlejohn, CEO at EBA Clearing, remarked:
“We are pleased to see the Spanish community connected to our R2P Service from day one of the SRTP Scheme. IBERPAY is the first infrastructure provider extending R2P access to its user community. This supports our objective to build full pan-European reach for Request to Pay and ensure interoperability between the underlying infrastructures”.