Seven Italian banks are to migrate their domestic payments processing to the EBA's Step2 pan-European automated clearing house.
Under the agreement, the banks - Banca Intesa, Gruppo Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Gruppo Bipiemme-Banca Popolare di Milano, Gruppo Banco Popolare di Verona e Novara, SanPaolo IMI and Gruppo UniCredit - will begin processing domestic payments over the Step2 platform from Spring next year.
The Step2 system is operated on the EBA's behalf by Italy's bank-owned payments body SIA, and has been used for clearing intra-EU transfers since April 2003.
EBA Clearing says it is currently in discussion with the Finnish, Luxembourgish and Spanish banking communities about shifting domestic traffic to the pan-European system.
The Italians have commited to the switchover just as Europe's banks come under increasing pressure to move to a Single Euro Payments Area (Sepa) for processing domestic and cross-border transactions.