The latest edition of Oaklen Consulting's industry watch highlights the role of instant transfer in the hybridisation of payments.
The latest edition of Oaklen Consulting's industry watch highlights the role of instant transfer in the hybridisation of payments.
With the P27 project, four Northern European countries (Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway) are working on the implementation of a real-time cross-border and multi-currency payment system accessible to their 27 million inhabitants. Like the European Payment Initiative (EPI), which is based on the SCT Inst, P27 wants to set up an instant transfer infrastructure to meet the new payment needs of individuals and businesses. A significant part of the infrastructure is planned for Request To Pay, in particular for bill payments.
The World Bank analyses the implementation of instant payments in 85 countries at stages ranging from opportunity studies to full-scale deployment. The World Bank has identified a number of environmental criteria that demonstrate that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for instant payment, and that its adoption must take into account a number of factors such as end-user service provision and pricing, consumer confidence and technology. On this basis, the World Bank would like to propose a methodology for the implementation of instant payment.
The Berlin Group presents its 2021 work plan for Open Finance which, beyond PSD2 APIs, covers topics such as Request to Pay initiation, SDD mandate management, identity attribute confirmation (age, ...), service catalogue consultation and subscription to these services. The Berlin Group is clearly moving in the same direction as UK Open Banking to structure Open Finance well beyond PSD2.
The EPC already provides details of the Request to Pay scheme and in particular details 6 possible cases of use between accept immediately / later and pay immediately / later. More surprisingly, the document also mentions the ambition to introduce in a later version the notion of payment guarantee and/or pre-authorisation associated with an RTP.
ERPB and EPC publish specifications to enable interoperability of mobile-initiated SCT Inst on a physical acceptance system. The illustrations are based on the use of QR Code to facilitate interoperability. The role of the TPP in providing the application to the payer and enabling payment initiation is also essential. It remains to be seen whether this interoperability can be limited to a "technical" vision or whether it should also include operational rules beyond those of the SCT Inst scheme.