• UniCredit goes live with instant payments in Italy and Germany and becomes the first bank to offer the service in the German market 

• The bank’s first payment was executed in the morning of 21 November between Germany and Italy

UniCredit has today launched its instant payments solution in Italy and Germany. Immediately after the European instant payments infrastructure was officially in operation this morning, UniCredit conducted its inaugural instant payment from Germany to Italy. The payment took exactly 2.5 seconds to be completed, demonstrating the bank’s capabilities in both countries and across borders. This makes UniCredit the first bank to offer real-time payments in Germany and the first to use the format for a cross-border payment.

Today’s launch marks the beginning of the bank’s roll-out of instant payments in line with the European Payments Council’s (EPC) SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) scheme, as originally initiated by the European Central Bank. Instant payments allow clients to conduct payments within only a few seconds. As set by the EPC, there is a limit of 15,000 euro per transaction.

Gianfranco Bisagni, Global Co-Head of CIB at UniCredit, comments: “After a very focused development and implementation process, the official launch today is a proud moment for us. We have always aimed to lead the way on developing instant payments solution for our clients and we are excited about the benefits this new service will bring to our clients – promoting speed and transparency through 24-hour, 365-days-a-year coverage and real-time notifications of successful payments.”

UniCredit now offers instant payment execution for inbound payments in Italy and Germany. After one week of live operation in the European instant payments infrastructure, outbound payment execution will be available in Germany starting from 27 November 2017. Outbound payment execution in Italy will follow on 22 February 2018.