The Euro Banking Association (EBA) has disclosed plans to create a pan-European ACH for mass payments in euro - 'Step2' - and to build a central platform for capturing multi-currency corporate e-payments.
Confirmation of the initiatives follows the EBA's Annual General Meeting in Paris last week.
The Step2 solution will be designed to handle cross border payments and to be progressively available for domestic payments. EBA is working towards a live service for the end of 2002. The Association says the service will allow a significant reduction in cross border payment processing costs, bringing them down to a level comparable to current domestic costs.
The EBA’s low-value payment system, Step1, was successfully launched last November and has 115 banking users, representing more than 70% of the clients for bank services in the EU. The number of Step1 participants is expected to increase to over 150 by the end of the year says the Association.
The EBA has at the same time presented a project for creating a central platform for capturing multi-currency payment orders initiated by the corporate customers of participating banks. The platform, labelled 'e-ba', will be designed in particular to cater for the needs of corporates involved in e-commerce.
The EBA says it has approached a number of third party vendors about the technical development of the platform. It is envisaged that the service will be operated by a new company to be formed in the fourth quarter of this year under the aegis of EBA.