One of the major limitations of the bank transfers is the crediting time, from 2 to 5 days, and for this reason in recent times the instant bank transferwhich however has a cost (speaking of banks, do you know how to deactivate bank SMS?).
By the end of 2023, however, the EU had reached an agreement between member countries to guarantee instant and safer payments to all European citizens, and yesterday Parliament voted: the instant bank transfer within 10 seconds must be guaranteed to everyone, and without additional costs.
The new regulation, approved with 599 votes in favor7 against and 35 abstentions, aims to ensure that i clients and the businesses do not have to wait for the transfer of money from bank transfers, as well as improving the security of monetary transfers.
According to the approved text, which you can find at this address, banks and other payment service providers (PSPs) will have to ensure that credit transfers are convenient and processed immediately.
Independently from day or from the timethe money must arrive in the recipient’s account within ten seconds, and the payer must receive confirmation, again within ten seconds, whether the transferred funds have been made available to the recipient or not. intended recipient.
To ensure safety, the regulation establishes that i PSP provide, immediately and without additional costs, a service detection And prevention fraud prevention that verifies the identity of the recipient, so as to prevent credit transfers from going to the wrong account.
Finally, as further protection against fraud, PSPs must allow customers to set up a maximum amount for instant credit transfers in euros, which must be possible easily modified before the next transfer.
The new rules also apply (after a longer transition period) to Member States whose currency it’s not the euro but the accounts already offer regular transactions in euros.
In this case there will be a special exemption for payment disbursement within ten seconds outside of working hours to address possible concerns about access to euro liquidity.
As we anticipated, the new rules establish clearly and the charges applied by a PSP in relation to Euro Instant Transfer transactions they cannot be superior to the charges applied to normal bank transfer transactions (i.e. non-instant).
This should decree the end of the surcharge for instant transfers (or banks now they will charge a commission to all bank transfers?).
Finally, according to the new rules, in case a PSP does not fulfill its duties of fraud prevention resulting in financial damage, the customer may ask to be compensated.
But when will be applied these rules and will we be able to benefit from this solution? According to the press release, the new rules come into force 20 days later publication in the Official Journal of the EU, while Member States will have 12 months to apply the regulation.
However, the timing for Member States whose currency is not the euro has not been communicated.
