The European Banking Authority (EBA) has announced that 24 payment service providers from 11 countries have confirmed their intention to support the delivery of a pan-European Request to Pay (R2P) infrastructure solution.

The announcement followed an extensive user consultation on an R2P blueprint created by a dedicated EBA Clearing task force from November 2018 to March 2019. As the blueprint had been well-received by its user community, the industry provider of pan-European payment infrastructure solutions issued a call for action in April to rally the necessary support for the development of the proposed solution.

The blueprint sets out a ‘thin-layer’ infrastructure solution that will be based on real-time messaging and separated both from the services solutions and payment infrastructure layers. The solution is aimed at accommodating both existing and future Request to Pay end-user products and services, regardless of the underlying use case. To this effect, it is expected to allow both ‘Approve Now’ and ‘Approve Later’ responses from the payer.

Hays Littlejohn, chief executive of EBA Clearing, said he believes that a use case-agnostic pan-European R2P infrastructure solution will be a crucial part of the toolset which payment service providers (PSP) need to unlock the full potential of instant payments.

“It is great to see that 24 of our users have already confirmed their support of this development project; we expect that more will follow shortly and will be very happy to welcome them too,” he stated, explaining that the plan is to deliver a solution aligned with the work at the European Payments Council before the end of 2020.

“We are eager to kick off the development of this service, which will be open to any PSP adhering to the future Request to Pay scheme arrangements, and to ensure that the specifications are made available in due course.”

Erwin Kulk, head of service development and management at EBA Clearing, added: “Request to Pay solutions can increase certainty, transparency and convenience of payment processes; for instance by speeding up the end-to-end process and easing reconciliation.”

Founded in 1998, EBA Clearing is owned by 49 of the major banks operating in Europe and is based on a country-neutral governance model.

It manages and operates the payment services EURO1, STEP1, STEP2 and RT1. The pan-European real-time payment platform RT1 went live in November 2017 and processes euro instant payments complying with the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer Scheme.

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