• UniCredit has started testing with the first pan-European instant payment solution, RT1, in preparation for its instant payments go-live 

• Real-time payments products will first become available to UniCredit customers in Italy and Germany

 UniCredit and EBA CLEARING today announced that UniCredit has started testing with RT1, EBA CLEARING’s pan-European, real-time payment platform. This test phase is a key milestone for UniCredit in its preparations to roll out euro instant payment productsto its customer base across Europe.

UniCredit is one of the first banks preparing to make real-time payments available to customers in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) on the launch date of the European Payments Council’s SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (“SCT Inst”) Scheme.

UniCredit customers in Italy and Germany will be the first to use this new payment method, starting from November 2017 onwards.

Jan Kupfer,Global Co-Head of Global Transaction Banking at UniCredit, commented: “The introduction of euro-denominated instant payments will enable us to better support the payment businesses of both our corporate and retail customers in the internal market. By providing our customers with paymentsfacilities 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,with payers notified of a successful transaction within seconds, we will greatly enhance the effectiveness of our services and increase customer trust. Widespread adoption and new, value-added services that optimise the customer experiencewill only serve to increase the benefits. In addition, UniCredit’s ongoing digital transformation program will be a further beneficiary of our connection to the new instant payments infrastructure.”

Hays Littlejohn, CEO of EBA CLEARING, said: “We are very pleased to count UniCredit among the early front-runners actively preparing to join our RT1 system on the launch date of European instant payments and to roll out this highly attractive new payment method to a multinational customer base. Our aim was to provide the European payments industry with a fully-fledged pan-European infrastructure system from the start date of SCT Inst, and we are happy to see that RT1 meets the requirements of our funding banks as well as of a growing community of fast followers across the continent. Banks from several different countries are currently engaged in testing activities, with more following before the end of the summer. At present, close to 30 financial institutions are planning to connect to RT1 in November while another 70 banks are preparing to join in 2018.”

UniCredit is among the 39 funding institutions enabling the development of the new EBA CLEARING infrastructure, which will provide a pan-European, real-time payment processing engine working 24 hours a day,every day of the year.

Starting from November 2017, account-servicing payment service providers (ASPSPs) from across SEPA will be able to use this highly flexible euro payments solution that is fully compliant with the European Payments Council’s SCT Inst Scheme and in line with the ISO 20022 global messaging standards for real-time payments.