Revolut, a digital bank that reports over 27 million retail customers worldwide, has announced a successful finalization of “a direct connection to Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) financial network.”
By joining more than 3000 financial institutions including the world’s biggest banks already participating in SEPA, Revolut marks “a significant milestone in growth as a global payments business.”
SEPA reportedly “enables fast, secure, and efficient payments to be made between participating banks for their customers.” In total, 36 European countries “are part of SEPA, with over 529 million customers using it to make 146 billion electronic payments annually.”
Since February 2023, Revolut Bank UAB, the European entity of Revolut, “has become a direct participant in SEPA.”
This allows the bank to “clear its own euro transfers through the STEP2 (SEPA Credit Transfers) and RT1 (SEPA Instant) schemes.” For both retail and business customers this translates “to faster payments with fewer intermediaries involved.”
Jason Pijnaker, Head of Core Payments at Revolut says:
“This significant milestone marks the first direct integration established by Revolut, as it now clears its own domestic EUR payments for the entire group, without relying on partners. This demonstrates our maturity in the European market, as a direct participant. Additionally, we are operating on TIPS (the instant payment scheme of the ECB), making us live on all available EUR instant payment schemes.”
SEPA was launched “by the European banking and payments industry, with the support of national governments, the European Commission, the Eurosystem, and other public authorities.”
It is helping “to achieve Europe’s goal of open strategic autonomy in banking and payments.”
The payment integration “activated by SEPA has contributed to the efficiency and competitiveness of the European economy as a whole, by eliminating differences between national and cross-border payments and harmonizing standards across all participating countries.”
As covered, Dmitry Zlokazov, Head of Product at neobank Revolut, recently noted that the joint accounts feature should help the app become more social and “inclusive.”
Revolut’s new joint account feature is available for consumers across Europe.
As noted in the update from the Fintech firm, joint accounts are part of the virtual banking platform’s latest 9.0 app version. This new version was introduced on April 13, 2023 and is available for iOS and Android clients in the European Economic Area (EEA).
