EBA Clearing will upgrade its Step2 pan-European mass payment system later this year to process Sepa transactions around the clock, seven days a week, and to provide settlement results to participating banks in minutes.
Step2 processes on average 55 million Sepa credit transfers and direct debits per day, connecting more than 4800 payment service providers operating in Europe.
The upgrade, planned for November, will enable Step2 participants to shorten end-to-end processing timelines for retail payments in euro from hours to minutes.
Erwin Kulk, head, service development and management, EBA Clearing, says: "Thanks to the Step2 upgrade, large payment volumes can be reliably processed at near-real-time speed around the clock without any increase in processing costs or significant new investments.
"This will help PSPs across Europe focus their available resources and processing capacity for instant payments to those time-critical payments for which merchants and consumers are requesting innovative solutions, for example at the point of sale or in e-commerce."