•  With most financial institutions’ strategies now in place to comply with SEPA Instant Credit mandates, what’s envisioned immediately and ongoing after the regulation takes effect in 2025 across all Euro transacting, SEPA countries?
• On Day One, within the first ninety days, and looking ahead one year after its effective dates, what can we expect in terms of the SCT Inst’s impacts on consumers, merchants, corporations, and their financial providers? Will we see the increase in volumes and a change in behavior as the regulation intends? How about cost savings – or potentially rising levels of financial crime?
• For the institutions that do meet the deadlines, how quickly will benefits be realised from the rule’s implementation, and in contrast, what might happen to those still in non-compliance, or slow to clarify their rollout plans?
• Which client use cases will prove to be most popular right from the start, and help the industry demonstrate - even to non-Euro countries - how to broadly advance financial inclusion by promoting SEPA’s new cross-regional instant payments functionality?
• Once the new payment rails and rules are widely adopted, what’s the next priority, and what role will Wero, the Europe-wide digital payment system launched in mid-2024, play in enriching the consumer and merchant transaction experience?

Instant payments have been offered across continental Europe in differing forms but with limited utilisation thus far by consumers, corporations and merchants. Now, with the European Commission’s legislative action to normalise their availability across SEPA countries, the well-publicised mandate that all financial institutions must be prepared to meet in stages across 2025 is imminent; but what could industry’s readiness and the post-deadline outlook be?

The intended benefits seem very straightforward: ensure that instant payments are affordable, secure, and processed without hindrance across the SEPA countries. Will the legislation support the growth of instant payments and the EUs intent, or will some of the challenges faced by financial institutions persist after the deadline and lead to an inferior product compared to other payment types? Will all banks be ready, or are some facing challenges that might inhibit their compliance with the pending EU mandate, risking possible penalties and customer discontent or departure?

Conversely, will those banks prepared to use the new rules as invitations to stand out from the rest -to enhance and expand their offerings to their retail and corporate clients - take additional market share? The EU and the financial services industry are encouraging innovation-led economic growth across Europe, to open up the banking system to new participants across all social strata, and ultimately provide lower costs and faster, easier transactions to everyone. Time will tell how ready (or not) Euro-country financial institutions were to respond to the mandate’s drive for adoption of instant payments across the region, with their performance and results ultimately offering valuable lessons for non-Euro industry colleagues.

Sign up for this Finextra webinar, hosted in association with ACI Worldwide, to join our panel of industry experts for a discussion on the opportunities and challenges presented by new EU instant payment legislation coming into effect in 2025. We’ll explore thoughts on SEPAInst’s potential impacts once launched, three months in, and a year later, and talk about the current state of readiness and likely outcomes (positive or negative) for participating financial institutions – depending on how they embrace the mandate’s requirements, or not. We’ll discuss EU regulators’ intentions for the new rules and possible institutional compliance and share several use cases on how banks might use this opportunity to capture new client business and expand existing relationships.