SEPA Instant Credit Transfer

Instant payments are electronic payments that are processed in real time, around the clock, every day of the year, with the money being available in the payee’s account within ten seconds.

The SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) scheme and its operational rules were developed by the European Payments Council (EPC) on the basis of the EPC’s existing SEPA credit transfer (SCT) scheme. The SCT Inst scheme became operational in November 2017. SCT Inst payments can be made by all kinds of payers, from consumers to large enterprises.

They work like standard SCT payments except that the transfer of funds between scheme participants occurs within ten seconds and the amount of each transaction is capped at €100,000.

As a member of the Eurosystem, Národná banka Slovenska provides the Eurosystem-operated TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) service to the Slovak banking market.

TIPS is based on the SCT Inst scheme and was developed as an extension of TARGET2, the real-time gross settlement system owned and operated by the Eurosystem. TIPS settles payments in central bank money and currently only in euro.

Payment services providers participate in TIPS and SCT Inst on a voluntary basis.

In December 2019 Národná banka Slovenska and the Slovak Banking Association produced a National plan for the implementation of instant payments in the Slovak Republic , which sets a deadline and conditions for the implementation of SEPA instant payments in the domestic market.

In Slovakia the instant payments are provided to the clients by the following banks : Slovenská sporiteľňa, Tatrabanka, VÚB banka and J&T Banka.