The European Council has adopted the Instant Payments Regulation, which is scheduled to come into effect in a matter of weeks. On 19 March 2024, the Official Journal of the EU (OJ) was updated with a publication regarding Regulation (EU) 2024/886 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 March 2024 amending the Single Euro Payments Area Regulation, the Cross-Border Payments Regulation, the Settlement Finality Directive and the Second Payment Services Directive as regards instant credit transfers in euro.

The regulation enters into force on the twentieth day following its publication in the OJ, namely 8 April 2024, which sets a tight deadline for compliance. Its primary objective is to improve the strategic independence of the European economic and financial sector by reducing reliance on third-country financial institutions and infrastructures such as Visa and Mastercard. The EU argues that such dependency poses risks to the stability and sovereignty of its financial system, and by promoting Euro Instant Payments, the Union aims to mitigate this reliance and support its financial autonomy.

According to electronicpaymentsinternational.com, the regulation's implementation timeline is unprecedented in terms of scale and speed, posing a significant challenge for financial institutions across the EU. Officials from ACI Worldwide cited by the same source noted that the regulation will require banks and payment service providers in the EU's 27 member states to comply within nine months, enabling them to receive instant credit transfers in Euros by 9 January 2025. They also talked about the exceptional pace of change, labelling it as a colossal challenge for the industry and urging the entire sector to prioritise compliance efforts.

More details about the recently adopted regulation According to the European Council, a number of national regulatory solutions have already been adopted or proposed to increase the uptake of instant credit transfers in euro, including by strengthening the protection of PSUs from sending funds to an unintended payee and by specifying the process of compliance with obligations flowing from restrictive measures adopted by the Union. The same source reveals that the differences among those national regulatory solutions pose a risk of fragmentation of the internal market that would result in the increase of compliance costs due to different sets of national regulatory requirements and a more difficult execution of cross-border instant credit transfers. Uniform rules on instant credit transfers in euro, including cross-border instant credit transfers, needed to be introduced to prevent such obstacles from arising.

.