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Sunday, February 22, 2026
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The EPC Has Submitted its Proposal for the Design of an Instant Credit Transfer Scheme

It is an important milestone for instant payments in Europe. The European Payments Council (EPC) proposal for the design of a Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) instant credit transfer (SCT Inst) scheme was submitted on that day to the Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB), and approved.

In this blog post, Anthony Richter, Chair of the EPC ad hoc task force on instant payments, highlights the major features of this budding scheme, as well as the next steps to make it a reality.

The EPC proposal for the design of an instant credit transfer scheme is part of the ERPB agenda on instant payments. It covers the general features of this future optional scheme, which will be based on the credit transfer payment instrument, for transactions in euro in SEPA countries.

The ERPB has invited the EPC to proceed with the development of an SCT Inst scheme on the basis of its proposal. The EPC will now address the remaining open issues (such as the maximum number of seconds needed to process an SCT Inst transaction) and then start developing the SCT Inst Rulebook and Implementation Guidelines. Actions under the responsibility of other parties (e.g. the clearing and settlement details) are expected to be carried out in parallel.

The EPC plans to release the draft SCT Inst Rulebook and Implementation Guidelines by the summer of 2016. It will be followed by a three-month public consultation. The target date for the publication of these items will, therefore, be November 2016.

Javier Santamaría, chair of the EPC, says: “We look forward to the support of all Payment Service Providers and technical players to implement this project, which will be the first of its kind in a region as large as Sepa.”

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