Revolut, today, announces its direct connection to the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) scheme.
„By joining more than 100 financial institutions in SEPA – including the world’s biggest banks – this announcement marks a significant milestone in Revolut’s growth as a global payments business.” – according to the press release.
SEPA enables fast, secure, and efficient payments to be made between participating banks for
their customers. In total, 36 European countries are part of SEPA, with over 529 million customers
using it to make 146 billion electronic payments annually.
Revolut Bank UAB, the European entity of Revolut, is now a direct participant in SEPA. This allows
the bank to clear its own euro transfers through the STEP2 (SEPA Credit Transfers and Direct
Debits) and RT1 (SEPA Instant) schemes. For both retail and business customers this translates to
faster payments with fewer intermediaries involved.
SEPA Credit Transfers typically arrive on the next business day. However, with SEPA Instant
payments, which Revolut offers for free, retail customers can transfer their funds in less than 10
seconds to and from other banks participating in SEPA Instant.
Jason Pijnaker, Head of Core Payments at Revolut said: “This significant milestone marks the
first direct bank transfers integration established by Revolut, and it now clears its own domestic
EURO payments for the entire group, without relying on partners. This demonstrates our maturity
in the European market as a direct participant. Additionally, we are operating on TIPS (the instant
payment scheme of the ECB), making us live on all available EURO instant payment schemes.”
SEPA was launched by the European banking and payments industry, with the support of national
governments, the European Commission, the Eurosystem, and other public authorities. It is
helping to achieve Europe’s goal of open strategic autonomy in banking and payments. The
payment integration activated by SEPA has contributed to the efficiency and competitiveness of
the European economy as a whole, by eliminating differences between national and cross-border
payments and harmonising standards across all participating countries.
____________
In 2015, Revolut launched in the UK, offering money transfer and exchange. Today, more
than 28 million customers – out of which 2,7 million only in Romania – and hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world use dozens of Revolut’s innovative products to make more than 330 million transactions a month.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below: