New fast and secure payments channel cleared by EBA in Luxembourg. Will they allow FX?

EBA CLEARING announced today that its RT1 platform has considerably expanded its reach in Luxembourg. Five new joiners connected to RT1 today, including two participants from Luxembourg: Banque et Caisse d’Epargne de l’Etat, Luxembourg and Banque Internationale à Luxembourg.

With these additional joiners, RT1 has established critical mass for instant payments in Luxembourg in terms of payment accounts covered. This latest development has also further contributed to the build-up of pan-European instant payment reach: critical mass has now been reached in 10 countries across the continent, including Austria, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Spain.

With many FX brokers having to route payments via channels outside of the world’s major financial capitals due to the curtailment of merchant services provision by Western banks and payment processors, there could be a major opportunity here to secure a far better route for brokers to conduct withdrawals and deposits via Luxembourg, a secure region with first class banking and some of the best financial infrastructure in the world. The question is whether this massive expansion of payment clearing will look favorably on transactions to and from FX brokerages.

RT1 currently counts 74 participants across Europe, which extend reach to 2,570 Addressable Payment Service Providers (PSPs) from 24 different SEPA countries listed in the routing table of the system. Together, these PSPs account for over 75% of the regular SEPA credit transfers EBA CLEARING processes today. The RT1 system presently handles over 1 million transactions per day on weekdays.

“As the leading retail bank in Luxembourg, Spuerkeess is proud to bring Instant Payments to the Luxembourg market. Thanks to the collaboration with EBA CLEARING through the participation in RT1, we can ensure continuous availability, rapidity and pan-European reachability for our customers’ euro payments,” said Serge Wagener, Vice President, Payments, Banque et Caisse d’Epargne de l’Etat, Luxembourg (Spuerkeess).

“Joining RT1 puts us at the same level as other European players when it comes to Instant Payments. It significantly improves the customer experience as eligible payments can be handled 24/7. We are very proud to join this pan-European initiative, as first movers on the Luxembourg market,” said Serge Munten, Head of Agile Operations, COO, Banque Internationale à Luxembourg.

“We are very pleased that PSPs across Europe can now reach a critical mass of payment accounts in Luxembourg via RT1. We will continue to work with market players all across Europe to further increase pan-European reach for instant payments. In 2021, we will further expand the functionalities of the TIPS Instructing Party Functionality in RT1 to ensure that our participants can meet the new TIPS obligations in a very efficient and cost-effective way: they will be able to use RT1 as a single place to view their transaction flows and to reconcile as well as manage their positions,” said Hays Littlejohn, CEO of EBA CLEARING.

RT1 provides payment service providers in the Single Euro Payments Area with a real-time payment processing facility operating around the clock on any day of the year for payments in line with the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) Scheme of the European Payments Council. Payments in RT1 are settled in real-time with immediate finality.

RT1 is open to any account-servicing payment service provider (AS-PSP) adhering to the EPC SCT Inst Scheme. A variety of options to interact with the system allow any type of EPC SCT Inst Scheme adherent to access the RT1 platform in the way that best suits their needs.