SEPA Instant Payments
Is your institution ready for the new European SEPA instant payments regulation (IPR)?
By October 2025, all institutions in Europe offering payments services must also be able to support sending out instant payments, and those transactions must be completed within 10 seconds although the target is even faster, at 5 seconds. This is a major change to current practices.
This new regulation is complex, and not every institution has the in-house knowledge required to understand it and put the changes into practice.
In the Netherlands, where SEPA has been in place for a few years, our Projective Group experts have deep knowledge and understanding of the instant payments process.
We offer our clients a three-phase solution from Awareness of the SEPA regulations through Design and Implementation.
With an Instant Payment transaction, the money must be available for the recipient within about 10 seconds – this is completely different to today.
A three-phased solution
Many institutions are unsure if the IPR regulation will apply to them. They don’t understand the regulation and find it complex, yet don’t know who to turn to for help. Others feel that their response is behind schedule and want to accelerate the implementation process.
To put it all in context, SEPA is a scheme that allows those using it to make and receive payments in a matter of seconds across the Single Euro Payments Area. It’s 24x7x365, so ALWAYS on, even on weekends and holidays.
The timelines to implement the Instant Payments (IPR) legislation are:
- EU countries
- Jan 2025: Incoming payments
- Oct 2025: Outgoing payments
- Non-EU countries
- Jan 2027: Incoming payments
- July 2027: Outgoing payments
At Projective Group, our experts have devised a three-phase solution, serving our clients end-to-end.
Awareness phase
Firstly, we will help you to understand what it means to become an instant payments participant and make you aware of the value instant payments can bring to your institution. We will do this through providing a SEPA ‘Quick Scan’, by holding an Awareness workshop and/or by delivering training.
Design phase
Secondly, we will help you to design a solution that incorporates best practices. We can help you with vendor selection, key design decisions, business analysis and/or project management. We will assist you in required discussions with the many internal stakeholders that need to be involved: IT, operations, channels, compliance, treasury, risk, finance, fraud and customer service.
Implementation
Finally, we will help you to implement your instant payments capability. This includes working with you through risk assessments and operational procedures, as well as considering some out-of-the-box test cases and scenarios.
Why Projective Group?
Projective Group will help you to understand how the new IPR will apply to your institution and how you should respond to it by making appropriate changes to your processes and practices.
We will take a very structured approach to tackling key design decisions and work hard to increase your understanding of the regulation and how to unravel its complexities.
Projective Group offers pan-European unmatched expertise through our network of strategists, compliance officers, payment platform experts, data management specialists and security specialists, all of whom are ready to respond to the demands of the IPR. As a leading provider of services in jurisdictions in which the instant payment service is already a live proposition, our specialists have deep knowledge of how to design and implement an end-to-end solution.
The timeline is tight. Within the Eurozone, institutions must be able to both receive and send instant payments by October 2025 at the latest. For institutions outside the Eurozone and for payment institutions/electronic money institutions, the deadline is July 2027.
We want to make sure our clients are best placed to embrace the new opportunities to be afforded by the SEPA instant payments service. So, at Projective Group we don’t work for our clients – we work with them.