Around 200,000 European credit transfers with a total value of 1.36 billion were recorded by SIA-SSB at the close of the first week of processing of credit transfers compliant with the new Single Euro Payments Area standards (SEPA) which, as of last Monday, sees the participation of banks in the 27 European Union countries, in addition to Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
In particular, over 100 banks from all around Europe exchanged the new SEPA Credit Transfer (SCTs) as a result of SIA-SSB’s technology infrastructures, guaranteeing their clientele the processing of payments in euros with the same procedures, conditions and in the same time, for both domestic and cross-border transactions.
Since the launch date, the number of daily transactions has been growing steadily, and the highest number of transactions was recorded on 31 January, when there were over 64,000 credit transfers with a total value of nearly 590.
According to two studies carried out respectively by the European Central Bank and the European Union, SEPA will produce significant positive effects, with savings that could top 123 billion over the next six years. A further 238 billion could be added to this figure should SEPA also be used for electronic invoicing.
SIA-SSB has created a technology platform to process the new SCTs. This application is used both by EBA Clearing with STEP2, the first and only pan-European clearing house (PE-ACH) for retail payments in euros to which SIA-SSB is the technological partner, and by SIA-SSB for the operations of Italian banks within SEPA.
“The results achieved at the close of the first week since the official roll-out of SEPA are undoubtedly of great significance for a company like SIA-SSB, which in collaboration with EBA Clearing, has been investing in this strategic project since 2002 with the design and development of an innovative platform for the management of SEPA payments and collections, on which all European banks can now carry out their payments processing,” says Renzo Vanetti, CEO, SIA-SSB.