Cash And Trade Magazine For Cash and Trade professionals in the Middle East
Paris, Frankfurt, Brussels, 18th March 2014
EBA CLEARING witnesses substantial progress of SEPA migration
The pan-European retail payments clearing platform STEP2 experiences an important volume increase
EBA CLEARING communicated today that its STEP2 clearing platform is seeing considerable volume growth in SEPA payment processing, leading to peak day volumes above 100 million SEPA Credit Transfers and SEPA Direct Debits.
These volumes reflect the accelerating pace of migration to SEPA since the beginning of the year. According to the latest ECB statistics, the overall migration in the euro area from national payment schemes to the pan-European SEPA payment instruments reached close to 94 percent for credit transfers and over 80 percent for direct debits in February 2014.
“Over the past few months, our STEP2 platform has served as a reliable infrastructure to support the rapid migration of the banks to the new SEPA standards at a pan-European and a domestic level. At EBA CLEARING, we are very happy to support in this way – together with our technology partner SIA S.p.A. – the banks in Europe in coping with the important challenges that the SEPA migration has placed on them,” said Gilbert Lichter, Chief Executive Officer of EBA CLEARING. “In view of its prominent position and its systemic importance, we have made significant investments to ensure that the STEP2 platform meets state-of-the-art resilience requirements.”
“As a user of the STEP2 Services, I am very pleased with the performance of EBA CLEARING and SIA during this important migration exercise across Europe for banks and their customers,” said Erkki Poutiainen, Senior Vice President, Nordea, and Chairman of EBA CLEARING. “This achievement stands at the beginning of a new phase. EBA CLEARING will of course continue to provide highly efficient infrastructure services to the banks. At the same time, EBA CLEARING will also remain committed to developing new services that will support its customers’ needs for innovative solutions in the payments business in Europe and globally.”
EBA CLEARING’s STEP2 platform offers to the European financial industry a strong clearing infrastructure that provides full reach to all banks offering SEPA payment services to their customers. In addition to the platform’s pan-European role, the migration of domestic legacy payments to SEPA has further strengthened the position of STEP2 as a payment system of first choice for domestic retail payments.
