2,310 PSPs have already joined the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer scheme (58% of European PSPs). „Critical mass is being attained” – EPC says. No PSPs from Romania, so far.

The European Payments Council believes that a critical mass of SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) scheme participants and reachable payment accounts is being attained in the euro area. However, not even a single PSP from Romania is on the accession list so far.

As of April 2021, the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) scheme includes 2,310 payment service providers or PSPs from 23 countries in Europe – that is fifty-eight percent of the total number of SCT participants in SEPA and over sixty-eight percent of the total number of  participants in the euro area. More PSPs and additional countries will come on board over time.  

When measured in terms of reachable payment accounts, the SCT Inst current  penetration is even higher across the euro area as a significant majority of payment accounts is reachable for SCT Inst in twelve EU countries: Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.

The volume of SCT Inst transactions in the fourth quarter of 2020 represented almost eight percent of the total volume of SCT and SCT Inst transactions in SEPA, compared to five-and-a-half percent in the fourth quarter of 2019. This rapid growth is expected to continue in the coming quarters.

The following recent developments make the SCT Inst scheme even more attractive for PSPs and payment end-users alike:

. Since 1 July 2020, the maximum amount per SCT Inst instruction has been set at one hundred thousand euros, further facilitating business-to-business transactions. 

. The launch of the SEPA Request-to-Pay scheme (SRTP) on 15 June 2021 will complement the SCT Inst scheme across a broad range of use cases such as retail commerce transactions at physical or online point of interaction, proximity person-to-person transactions, and business-to-customer and business-to-business e-invoicing.

. The SEPA Proxy Lookup (SPL) scheme, which supports SCT Inst, facilitates interoperability between participating payment solutions by enabling the conversion of a proxy (mobile phone number, e-mail address) into a payment account identifier (IBAN) across SEPA.