Introduction

With the rise of the digital economy, both clients and merchants can buy and sell goods anywhere and at any time, even for purchases that cross national borders. Both parties into these transactions expect the financial institutions working behind the scenes to react in real-time and would consider a system that clocks off at 5pm or doesn't work on weekends to be far behind our modern times. The European Payments Council's SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) became operational in 2017 to make the Eurozone one of the largest financial markets in which creditors and debtors can make and receive transactions within ten seconds, rather than wait days for settlement and clearance, and be sure that transactions of up to EUR100,000 take place in real time, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year.

Financial institutions who signed up and adopted the scheme early have proven that instant payments can be a key differentiator in increasingly heated and far less locked in marketplace, with Deloitte even noting that banks offering instant payments and a user friendly app have seen SCT Inst being used a real alternative to card payments, which, owing to the fee-free nature of SEPA credit transfers, is also a very attractive proposition for merchants who would otherwise have to sacrifice a percentage of their profits to card processing fees.

SEPA Instant Credit Transfers in Mambu

The Mambu Payment Gateway accepts incoming SEPA Instant Credit Transfer messages in XML ISO 20022 format as per the Europen Payment Council rulebook. Our /payments/incoming API endpoint takes care of posting the transactions to a connected Mambu account, optionally going through any defined Anti-Money Laundering (AML) flows you may have set up for your organisation. All this while keeping within the 10 second window the SEPA scheme demands. For more information, see Incoming Messages in our API Reference.

Just like with standard SEPA Credit Transfers, the transactions are fully auditable in the Mambu Payment Gateway web application.

The timelines for Instant Credit Transfers are largely similar to those of standard SEPA payments, the only difference being that rather than allowing for a banking business day for settlement, funds must settle within 10 seconds of the transaction being initiated. The scheme does allow for a 20 second time to respond to allow for periods of high load on banking systems. Additionally, notification of rejected payments, for example, due to the account being closed or suspended, must be made within the same 10 second time-frame.

• Transfer Initiated → A client initiates a transfer from their bank to an account within the eurozone. While the funds are in transit the payer can request the transfer to be cancelled.
• Within 10 seconds after initiation → The funds should be made available to the receiver.
• Within 10 seconds after initiation → If a transfer has been initiated but, for example, the receiving bank account does not exist or there are other issues with the data, the receiving back can reject the payment within 10 seconds of receipt
• Within 10 days of settlement → The payer can request a recall for their payment within 10 days of it having settled. Reasons can include duplicate transfers, technical errors, and so forth.
• Within 13 months of settlement → In cases of fraud, the payer has up to 13 months to request recall of the payment. In either recall case, the bank receiving the request has 15 banking business days to respond to the request.

Supported use cases

• Processing incoming SEPA Instant Credit Transfers
• Automatically rejecting an incoming payment
• Initiating and receiving checks via an AML provider

Some things to consider

• You must be signed up to a clearing and settlement mechanism (CSM) that provides support for instant payments.
• SEPA Instant Credit Transfers are processed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, irrespective of any holidays you may have set up for your institution.