The Spanish banking community has become the first EU market to enable instant cross-currency payments under the European Payment Council's OCT Inst (One-Leg Out (OLO) Instant Credit Transfer scheme.
The entire Spanish banking community has been fully onboarded following pilot trials conducted in June 2023 with CaixaBank, Santander, BBVA, Swift, Iberpay and several international banks in different countries.
OCT Inst is a cross-currency payment scheme to support the processing of incoming and outgoing international instant account-to-account based credit transfers. It is the first EPC scheme which covers exclusively the Euro Leg of international instant credit transfers entering or leaving the geographical scope of Sepa.
This is designed to ensure faster execution of international payments, more transparency on costs and better payment status traceability.
The scheme went live in November 2023 but the postponement of ISO20022 migration for all Sepa schemes led to PSPs and Clearing and Settlement Mechanisms (CSMs) replanning the start of operations.
Speaking in May when Santander became the first Spanish bank to onboard to the scheme, Juan Luis Encinas, CEO, Iberpay, commented: "Providing the infrastructure and services necessary for processing international cross-currency instant transfers is a significant step forward for Iberpay, enabling our banks to offer new innovative services, to improve the customer experience and to remain highly competitive in the global payments industry."