Our retail payments strategy
The way you pay and receive money across Europe is constantly evolving. We want to make sure we evolve alongside the latest trends and technologies, and that the payment services you use remain safe as well as reliable, easy, and fast.
Payment services that can be used across Europe, both in physical shops and online, should be offered to all Europeans. That’s why we have put in place a new strategy that will support the creation of a pan-European payment solution and improve instant payments, among other things.
Payments anywhere in Europe
Customers should be able to make payments at the physical point-of-sale or via e-commerce, including on their mobile, throughout the entire European Union just as efficiently and safely as in their home countries. At the moment we lack a pan-European solution for payments made in physical shops or online.
The European Payments Initiative is developing a market initiative to establish a new payment solution for people and businesses across Europe. It will include a digital wallet that can be used to pay in physical shops, online and in person-to-person transactions.
The Eurosystem is open to any market initiative that meets five key objectives: pan-European reach, customer friendliness, safe and efficient payments, European identity and governance, and global reach in the long run.
Instant payments
Instant payments are electronic retail payments that are processed in real time 24/7 and in which the funds are made available to the recipient immediately. On the basis of an initiative from the Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB) in December 2014, an instant payments scheme (SCT Inst) was developed by the European payments industry and launched in 2017. However, service providers have been slow to join and deploy it to users.
We monitor the use of instant payments and, together with the other central banks of the Eurosystem, want instant payments to live up to their full potential. That’s why our strategy states that instant payments should be made available to all citizens and businesses across Europe and offered under attractive conditions, with additional functionalities such as requesting a payment.
How to make instant payments the new normal in Europe?Cross-border payments
Cross-border payments are payments where European users either transfer or receive money from outside Europe. These payments facilitate cross-border trade, investment and remittances, but are currently expensive, slow and
complex, making it difficult for consumers and businesses to send and receive money from a non-euro area country.
One of the goals of our strategy is to help European businesses and people make and receive payments overseas.
The ECB and Sveriges Riksbank have started to investigate whether TIPS can be used to settle cross-currency payments between euro and Swedish krona. In April 2020 the ECB and Sveriges Riksbank reached an agreement to enable
electronic payments in Swedish krona to be settled using TIPS as of May 2022.
An innovative European payments ecosystem
The traditional payments business is increasingly being challenged by new players and disruptive technologies. Financial technology (fintech) companies have accelerated innovation and the evolution of retail payments. In response, our retail payments strategy addresses the role of European fintech companies, and the Eurosystem has opened a European fintech payments dialogue for the purpose of discussing payments-related topics with these companies. A different topic is addressed at each meeting, and participants are invited on the basis of suggestions from European national central banks. Meeting summaries are published here.
- 2 December 2021 European fintech payments dialogue – open banking and application programming interfaces (APIs) – summary
- 22 February 2022 European fintech payments dialogue - e-ID in relation to payments – summary
- 28 March 2023 European fintech payments dialogue – the use of stablecoins and unbacked crypto-assets for retail payments - summary
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