The EBA Clearing Company says 19 banks from the new EU member states will next month join the Step2 pan-European ACH as indirect participants.
Since launch last year, 59 European Union banks have connected to the Step2 retail payments system as direct participants, and over 1200 banks joined as indirect participants. Today, the system processes an average 100,000 payments per day with peak days of almost 200,000 transactions.
Jean-Marie Avadian, chairman of EBA Clearing, comments: "To be above 100,000 payments a day at this stage indicates that more and more banks are switching from correspondent banking to Step2."
He says he expects the trend for growth to continue over the next 12 to 16 months as the EU extends its borders to encompass new member states.
Alan Taylor, head of bank relations at EBA Clearing, says: "We are very pleased to see the interest of the banks in the new EU members states to join Step2 for their euro payments."
EBA Clearing is currently preparing the launch of a pan-European direct debit processing service on the Step2 platform. This service is aimed at supporting the upcoming Pan-European Direct Debit scheme, as well as the requirements of banks intending to migrate their domestic traffic to Step2.