26 October 2022

Remarks by Commissioner McGuinness on the Commission's proposal for a regulation on instant payments

And perhaps this should have happened organically, but it didn't, and so we're taking this step today to make it happen, and to make it happen for the benefit of citizens and businesses.

There's a whole lot of power in the idea of being able to transfer within ten seconds, as Valdis has mentioned.

And there are so many possibilities for individuals and businesses from this facility that we want to unleash that power and we want it to happen more rapidly.

We would estimate that if we left it to the market, it might take a decade for instant payments to become the norm.

And therefore we are nudging this sector in this direction.

Valdis mentioned the figure of 200 billion euros that would be freed up on any given day, and this is an extraordinary high figure with much potential if it were available to participants.

So some few points around the initiative.

The first point is that instant payments will become universal.

I mentioned that it could take a decade if we do nothing and doing nothing is not an option.

So we need to speed up the process.

So our proposal will mandate anyone who offers transfers in euro to offer an instant option.

But we are phasing in the requirements.

Providers who are not in the Eurozone, but that offer euro transfers, will have an extra two years to comply with the requirements.

And that will allow providers focus their resources as they adapt to these changes.

Second point: instant payments will be a standard and affordable feature, not a premium service.

Part of what's holding instant payments back is that they can be expensive.

So we are introducing a cap on fees.

If fees are charged at all, they will not be allowed to exceed fees for non-instant transfers.

Third point: we are beefing up consumer protection.

Providers will have to offer consumers the service of checking that the name and the recipient matches the IBAN, the bank account number.

And that provides an extra layer of protection before a payment is made against mistakes or fraud.

Finally, we are making sanctions screening more efficient.

At the moment the vast majority of cross-border payments that are flagged during screening are false positives...

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