Brussels, New York and Paris – EBA CLEARING, The Clearing House (TCH) and SWIFT announced today that the delivery of the Immediate Cross-Border Payments (IXB) pilot service is on track and is set to revolutionize cross-border payments. The IXB pilot service will leverage the existing real-time payment systems RTP® in the United States, run by TCH, and RT1 in Europe, run by EBA CLEARING. IXB will begin processing the first live transactions in the euro and U.S. dollar currency corridor in the coming months.

Developed with the support of 25 financial institutions from both sides of the Atlantic, the IXB pilot has been progressing during the past six months, resulting in the timely delivery of the IXB solution processing the technical messaging between the pilot institutions engaged in the testing and the respective payment systems. End-to-end testing between RTP, the IXB app and RT1 is ongoing with user integration and testing following shortly thereafter.

EBA CLEARING, TCH and SWIFT have been working to move from a successful proof of concept to the design and development of a live IXB service. In cooperation with the supporting financial institutions, the three private-sector organisations designed a service that takes advantage of existing building blocks to ensure a shorter time to market and to leverage existing investments. IXB will enable synchronized settlement of RTP and RT1 payments. This will ensure certainty of execution of immediate cross-currency transactions and constitute a core value of the future IXB service.

"We are very pleased that the delivery of the IXB pilot is fully on track and we are eager to see the service take up live operations in the coming months,” said Petra Plompen, Head of New Initiatives at EBA CLEARING. “We look forward to the important insights and learnings we expect to gain from this pilot phase, which should help us tune the service for commercial rollout in 2023."

"The IXB pilot will help prepare for a full commercial rollout that will revolutionize the way cross-border payments are made between the United States and Europe,” said Rusiru Gunasena, Senior Vice President, RTP® Product Management and Strategy, at The Clearing House. “The connection between RTP and RT1 delivers a new way of moving money across borders safely, quickly, and at lower cost. The IXB model is also designed to add additional currency corridors in the near future."

"SWIFT is committed to ensuring instant, frictionless and interoperable transactions around the world,” said David Watson, Chief Strategy Officer, SWIFT. “We are working on many fronts to achieve this, and bringing common standards to the linking of market infrastructure projects is a fundamental pillar of our strategy. We are pleased to support the IXB project as it comes to fruition and the live exchange of cross-border instant payments gets underway.”

The IXB pilot service is planned to be followed by the launch of a full service IXB offering. The service will be aligned with the focus areas related to speed, access, cost and transparency, as outlined by the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) and Financial Stability Board (FSB) for enhancing cross-border payments. Based on a model that can be replicated across other currency corridors and payment systems, the IXB initiative is expected to add additional currencies from an early stage to meet customer expectations for instant cross-border payments across the globe.

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About EBA CLEARING
EBA CLEARING is a provider of pan-European payment infrastructure solutions processing over 17 billion transactions per year. Founded in 1998, the Company is owned by 48 of the major banks operating in Europe and is based on a country-neutral governance model. The payment systems of EBA CLEARING are pan-European by design and desire: they are developed in close co-operation with the Company’s multinational user community and best-of-breed technology partners.

EBA CLEARING manages and operates the payment services EURO1, STEP2 and RT1. Both EURO1 and STEP2 have been classified as systemically important payment systems (SIPS) by the European Central Bank. RT1, the first pan-European real-time payment system, processes euro instant payments complying with the European Payments Council’s SEPA Instant Credit Transfer Scheme. R2P, the Company’s pan-European request to pay infrastructure messaging service, was developed and implemented with the support of 27 payment service providers from 11 European countries.  Learn more at www.ebaclearing.eu. 

About SWIFT
SWIFT is a global member-owned cooperative and the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services. We provide our community with a platform for messaging, standards for communicating and we offer products and services to facilitate access and integration; identification, analysis and financial crime compliance. Our messaging platform, products and services connect more than 11,000 banking and securities organisations, market infrastructures and corporate customers in more than 200 countries and territories, enabling them to communicate securely and exchange standardised financial messages in a reliable way. Headquartered in Belgium, SWIFT’s international governance and oversight reinforces the neutral, global character of its cooperative structure. Learn more at www.swift.com.

About The Clearing House
The Clearing House operates U.S-based payments networks that clear and settle more than $2 trillion each day through wire, ACH, check image, and real-time payments. It is the nation’s most experienced payments company, with a long track record of providing secure and reliable systems, payments innovation, and strategic thought leadership to financial institutions. Most recently, The Clearing House has revolutionized U.S. payments infrastructure with the RTP® network, which supports the immediate clearing and settlement of payments, along with the ability to exchange related payment information across the same secure channel. These RTP capabilities enable all financial institutions to offer safer, faster, and smarter digital transaction services for their corporate and retail customers. Learn more at www.theclearinghouse.org.

Media Contacts:
Annick Moes
EBA CLEARING
+49 151 1631 1526
a.moes@ebaclearing.eu

Jonathan Cox
SWIFT
+44 20 7762 2132
jonathan.cox@swift.com

Greg MacSweeney
The Clearing House 
212.612.9282
gregory.macsweeney@theclearinghouse.org