MyBank E-Mandate pilot ready to go live

EBA Clearing has signed five financial institutions, 11 European service providers and two corporates for its MyBank E-Mandate pilot, which will begin in October and will test the firm’s solution for Sepa core direct debits for reliability, security and usability.

MyBank is an e-authorisation service designed to make it easier and safer to buy and sell goods and services over the internet in Europe. The service is available to all payment service providers in the single euro payments area (Sepa), including credit institutions and payment firms.

The pilot will run until February 2014, with the aim to enable MyBank users to create, modify and cancel e-mandates for Sepa from the beginning of next year. MyBank has 51 participants in France, Italy and Luxembourg, meaning the solution is available to 10 million retail customers for the initiation of Sepa credit transfers. Participants in the pilot come from Belgium, Finland, France, the UK, Italy and the Netherlands.

“The simplicity and safety of the MyBank E-Mandate solution will assist us in moving from paper mandates to e-mandates and streamline key processes around SDD mandate handling,” said Giovanni Vattani, head of payment systems at Italian electricity provider Enel Market Division Italy. “It will also support us in reducing costs in the management of SDD mandates.”

Sepa is intended to simplify and harmonise bank transfers in the European Union and as one of the pillars of European integration, is meant to help underpin the use of the single currency.

Launched in 1998, EBA Clearing manages the large-value payment system Euro1 as well as Step1, a payment system for commercial transactions. Since 2003, the company also has been managing the Step2 platform, a pan-European payment infrastructure for mass payments, processing Sepa credit transfers and Sepadirect debits. The firm is owned by 63 of the major banks operating in Europe.

Together with Swift, EBA Clearing has also set a release date for the revamped version of the Euro1/Step1 directory, which allows originator banks to identify Euro1 or Step1 banks through which beneficiary banks can be reached. Due to be launched on 21 October, the revamped directory has been improved with inputfrom the SwiftRef team and a working group comprised of Euro1 and Step1 participants.

The directory lists 18,000 banks and 8000 participant BICs. Access and use is free for participating banks.

“The close collaboration between EBA Clearing and the SwiftRef team has made this project a true success,” said Patrik Neutjens, head of reference data, SwiftRef at Swift. “The valuable enhancements to the Euro1/Step1 directory will benefit the payments industry as a whole and, in particular, our mutual clients – which was the real driver behind the project. The initiative confirms also SwiftRef as a global utility for payments reference data.”

At Sibos 2013, Emirates NBD announced it had applied for connection to the Step1 service. The bank is one of the larger banking groups in the Middle East interms of assets, and plans to start sending and receiving payments through its London subsidiary in the final quarter of 2013. The new participant will bring the number of Step1 banks to 84. At present, 220 banks in Europe can send and receive single payments via the Euro1/Step1 platform.

EBA Clearing also predicts that its Step2        pan-European automated clearing house will move from an average of 4.5 million payments processed per day to at least 30 million per day by the Sepa migration end date, which is expected for 2015/16. The platform has reported growth of 20 per cent in Sepa credit transfers and 80 per cent in Sepa direct debits, as well as 2 billion successful Sepa transactions, since the launch of the SCT and SDD schemes. Banks in Belgium, Estonia and Germany are moving national Sepa traffic to Step2. The Belgian banks are migrating their Sepa direct debits to the platform. The eight largest banks in Germany will use Step2 to exchange their domestic and cross-border Sepa traffic.

“Step2 is ready for the massive transaction volumes that will migrate to its Sepa services over the next four months,” said John Broxis, director of Step2 services. “Given the strategic importance of the platform for banks and banking communities across Europe, we are working very closely with our service participants to ensure a smooth ramp-up.”