EFiS selects SWIFT for instant payments connectivity within the Eurozone

SWIFT announced today that EFiS, the longest serving SWIFT Service Bureau in the EU, has selected SWIFT to provide connectivity to the Eurosystem’s TIPS and EBA Clearing’s RT1 for instant payments within the euro-area. As a leading provider for Global Payment Logistics, EFiS will offer its service under the agenda “Banks for TIPS” to its bank clients. The pilot phase will begin in September 2018.

Alain Raes, Chief Executive of Europe, Middle East & Africa, SWIFT said: “Europe has taken important steps to ensure that customers and corporates can benefit from instant payments and we are pleased to be able to connect our customers to such critical infrastructures. Our solution is designed to meet the current and future messaging needs of our customers in Europe and in the rest of the world.”

“With TIPS and SEPA 2.0, payments are prepared for digitisation on a technical level. Now they need to be implemented for business on the organisational level, too. This is what we ensure via our connectivity. The enhancement of the SWIFT-infrastructure is especially important for Corporates as global players. EFiS has also always been one of the first providers globally of new SWIFT features. So it was natural for us to seize the opportunity and to become the first Service Bureau in Europe to pilot SWIFTNet Instant,”said Armin Gerhardt, Managing Director of EFiS.

SWIFTNet Instant – meeting the messaging needs of the future

Launching in November 2018 to coincide with the launch of TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS), the euro real-time payments service commissioned by the Eurosystem, SWIFT’s new messaging service will allow instant payments to be made in euros across Europe through both TIPS and EBA CLEARING’s RT1 instant payments system.

With a global reach connecting more than 11,000 banking and securities organisations, market infrastructures and corporate customers in over 200 countries and territories, SWIFT is well placed to deliver the infrastructure necessary to facilitate instant payments efficiently and with minimal integration.

SWIFT is supporting customers as they move to meet the Eurosystem’s 2020 vision, which envisages access to TARGET2, TARGET2 for Securities and TIPS through the Eurosystem Single Market Infrastructure Gateway (ESMIG). SWIFT’s solution is designed to provide customers with a single gateway to connect seamlessly to multiple instant payment systems in Europe and beyond. 

SWIFT’s global instant payments strategy

The provision of an instant payments messaging service for the euro area is the latest step in SWIFT’s global instant payments strategy that leverages innovative technology to enable real-time payments to be made over the SWIFT network while also re-using existing infrastructure, ensuring a future-proof messaging solution that is easy to implement and maintain.

In February, SWIFT revolutionised Australian real time payments with the public launch of the country’s New Payments Platform (NPP). SWIFT has already provided Hong-Kong financial institutions with a gateway to Hong Kong’s Faster Payments System (FPS) and is providing a similar solution in the US to participants to The Clearing House’s real-time payments platform.

SWIFT currently connects 85 of the 149 High Value Payments systems in the world, including CHAPS in the UK, TARGET2 in Europe and the SWIFT India Domestic Services.

Join the instant payments discussion and find out more about how SWIFT can help you with instant payments at SWIFT.com.