The European Central Bank (ECB) has gone live with its pan-European service for instant payment settlement known as TARGET instant payment settlement (TIPS).
Payment settlement through TIPS is expected to take place in less than 10 seconds. It does not charge entry or maintenance fees for users. A quicker process will mean a larger volume of payments will run through in less time.
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For the first two years, ECB will charge banks €0.0020 for each transaction.
However, the first ten million payments that are settled on each TIPS account by the end of next year will have their fees waived off.
The service has been first used by a customer of Spanish lender CaixaBank. The customer used the service to pay a client of France’s Natixis.
Abanca Corporación Bancaria, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, Banco de Crédito Social Cooperativo, Berlin Hyp, Caja Laboral Popular Cooperativa de Crédito and Teambank are the other participating banks.
“Banks across Europe can now follow the lead of France, Germany and Spain, which have already connected to TIPS, by linking to the platform and developing user-friendly solutions that support the take-up of instant payments by appealing to both retailers and consumers,” ECB said in a statement.
