Foreign
EUROPEAN Commission on Wednesday in Brussels, in the regulation update, proposed that banking customers in the European Union should be able to make instant payments in euros anytime.
EU Commissioner for Financial Services Mairead McGuinness in a statement said “with the technology in place since 2017, there is no reason why customers can’t send and receive money immediately.’’
Instant payments are much faster than a bank’s traditional credit transfers and allow people to transfer money at any time of any day within 10 seconds according to the EU executive arm.
In comparison, existing credit transfers are only received by payment service providers during business hours and arrive in a person’s account the next business day, in some cases three days later.
Now the commission wants to make it mandatory for banks to offer instant payments along with regular credit transfers at any time of the day with no increased costs placed on the customer.
To reduce fraud and communication errors, the commission was also obliging the payment services in sending the money to verify the bank account number and the recipient’s name provided by the sender.
Client screening in the financial sector was also getting a shake-up: Instead of transaction-by-transaction screening, the commission wants banks to verify their clients against EU sanctions daily.
The commission said faster financial transactions could lead to an economic boost, ranging from 1.34 billion euros to 1.84 billion euros per year.
National financial authorities are to ensure compliance according to the commission’s proposal.
EU member states and the European Parliament must still approve the regulation update. (dpa/NAN)
A.I
Tags: EU Commissioner
