The European Payment Council’s One-Leg-Out Instant Credit Transfer scheme (OCT Inst) has gone live this week, enabling payments to and from Europe to be processed on a 24-hour, seven days a week basis.
The scheme is expected to allow financial institutions to leverage the benefits of domestic instant payment systems globally while continuing to use existing rails and enabling outgoing flows.
A successful proof-of-concept of the scheme was executed by Swift earlier this year, with international payments reaching Spanish accounts within seconds. European payment system Iberpay, Spanish banks BBVA, CaixaBank and Santander, and commercial banks in Australasia, Brazil and the UK partnered with the organisation on the initiative.
This method of interlinking market infrastructures will help the industry to meet G20 cross-border payment goals around speed, transparency, cost and access, Swift says.
The organisation currently reports that 89 per cent of payments on its network reached the end bank within the hour, in line with the G20 goal of 75 per cent of cross-border payments to be credited with the beneficiary within an hour by 2027.
Marianne Memarchi, chief executive of Swift in Europe, says: “Interoperability is at the heart of everything we are doing at Swift to achieve our strategy of instant and frictionless payments for all, and it will be key to achieving the G20’s goals for cross-border payments.
“The European Payment Council’s OCT Inst scheme is a positive step for Europe that will enhance the user experience for payers in Europe, but also all around the world.”
Juan Luis Encinas, CEO of Iberpay, comments: “This world-first pilot service aims to improve and optimise international cross-currency payments in terms of speed, transparency, cost-effectiveness, availability and accessibility, and sets the stage for enhanced user experiences, novel use cases and innovative services.”
