This session was moderated by Maria Adele Di Comite, research director at IDC Financial Insights. Also appearing on the panel were Daniele Astarita, principal solution consultant, ACI; Niklas Lemberg, head of payment industry, Nordea; Laura McDermott, head of SEPA product, NatWest Group; and Bridget Meijer, new markets manager, SurePay.

McDermott discussed that most banks have digital transformation and adapting technology for instant payments is part of most banks technology. Looking at what is actually changing, McDermott commented that: “the legislation that we expected has gone further than we expected. It has looked to make instant payments mandatory for anyone who provides SEPA payments.” She went on to describe that the legislation looked to make instant payments as affordable as possible, as well as addressing some of the friction concerns such as brining in daily lists instead of individual banks checking, and finally the bring of confirmation of payee.

Meijer agreed that Confirmation of Payee was an important aspect in the context of fraud and gaining the user’s trust of their payments. She used the example of name check, which she reported was introduced to the Netherlands in 2016, and resulted in an immediate lowering domestic and cross-border fraud. She concluded that: “fraudsters will always find ways to commit fraud, so that’s why it’s important one system in Europe, one consistent messaging so that customers can trust what they see on their screen and trust instant payments.”

Lamberg began by making the case for pre-validating payments so that this lessens the amount of fraud and also lowers the amount of friction within payments. However, he raised concerns about the expectations in the proposed legislation for non-Euro countries to be able to meet the same level of instant payments as Euro countries when they are dealing with additional hurdles.

Yet he noted that there is, “a lot of coordination going on.”

Asrarita commented that from a customer centricity perspective, “we will be surprised by the proliferation of use cases and the increased volumes we will be witnessing.” He argued that customers are likely to be welcome the security which is provided through proper instant payments.