Instant Payments in SEPA: How widespread is that in August 2021?

In the usual way, we look at public data from the ECB or EBA Clearing every two months and estimate the spread of or participation in instant payments in the SEPA area by consumers or banks. As a reminder: our contribution SEPA Instant Credit Transfer: Transfers up to € 100K in 10 seconds explains the essential properties of SEPA Instant scheme.

The following can be summarized in August 2021:

• Furthermore approx. 24% of all BIC bank codes in the SEPA area are connected to SCT Inst.
• Since June 2021, 15 other financial institutions have been registered as SCT Inst participants.
• The linear increase in SCT Inst transaction volume or SCT Inst amount volume recorded on the basis of data from EBA Clearing will also continue in August 2021.
• The number of TIPS and RT1 participants (measured in BIC bank codes) continues to grow steadily.

In the further part of the article there are detailed analyzes with corresponding graphics.

Instant Payments in SEPA: Comparison of SCT Inst vs. SCT availability in the SEPA area

This map of the SEPA area shows the percentage comparison of the number of SCT Instant participating BIC bank codes to the classic SCT participating BIC bank codes.

Based on the data from ECB from July 1st, 2021, from EBA Clearing from Augusth 10th, 2021 and the Bundesbank’s directory of available payment service providers as of August 23th, 2021, the percentage of SCT-participating payment service providers (measured using their BIC bank codes) is analyzed which have also opted for SCT Instant participation in the SEPA countries. The data on which the map is based are listed in the following table:

Percentage comparison of SCT Inst vs. SCT participation of the listed BIC bank codes per SEPA country, their participation in TIPS or RT1 in comparison between June and August 2021.

Instant Payments in SEPA: Statistics from ECB and EBA Clearing

Statistics from EBA Clearing

The following figure shows the average daily Instant SEPA Payments transaction volume processed via RT1 from January 2020 to June 2021. An almost linear increasing trend can still be seen here.

SEPA Instant via R1: Average daily SCT Inst transaction volume in 2020-2021 (data source: EBA Clearing)

The following figure shows the average daily SEPA Inst volume in EUR million processed via RT1 from January 2020 to June 2021. As expected, a similarly increasing trend can be seen here as well.

SEPA Instant via R1: Average daily SEPA SCT Inst volume in EUR million in 2020-2021 (data source: EBA Clearing)

The following figure shows the average transfer amount for Instant SEPA transfers for the period January 2020 to June 2021:

SEPA Instant via R1: Average transfer amount in 2020-2021 (data source: EBA Clearing)

Number of BIC bank code participants in TIPS or RT1

The following figure shows the number of BIC bank codes participating in TIPS and RT1 in the period from May 2020 to August 2021. A slowly increasing trend can still be seen.

Instant Payments in SEPA: Number of BIC bank codes connected to TIPS or RT1 in the period May 2020 – August 2021 (data sources: EZB, EBA Clearing)

New participating banks since June 2021

New TIPS participants since June 2021 are:

The Austrian Posojilnica Bank eGen left as TIPS participant since June 2021.
New RT1 participants since June 2021 are:

Our data sources

Here we evaluate the current status of participation in Instant SEPA Payments with public data from the European Central Bank (ECB) and EBA Clearing (EBA stands for Euro Banking Association) from May 2020 to August 2021.

Further information on Instant Payments in SEPA

This article is part of a series on Instant SEPA Payments and builds on these articles:

Do you want to find out more?

Among other things, we offer a high-performance software solution for processing SCT Inst transfers. If you have any questions, suggestions or are interested in the topic of payment transactions, Instant Payments in SEPA and software products, please contact us.