TIPS: recent developments

18 June 2021

TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) is a market infrastructure service launched by the Eurosystem in November 2018. It enables payments to be settled in real time around the clock, every day of the year.

Payment service providers that adhere to the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) scheme can join TIPS if they comply with the participation rules of TARGET2. To facilitate the onboarding of new participants, related documents are uploaded to the “For professional use” section of the TIPS webpages. A list of the latest updates can be found below:

New participants

The TIPS registration process is explained in the Guide for the on-boarding of new customers, and information regarding the testing is compiled in the User Testing Terms of Reference and the TIPS Certification Test Cases.

The list of payment service providers that have joined TIPS continues to grow. Banka Sparkasse d.d., Bankhaus Schelhammer & Schattera AG, Gorenjska banka d.d., Kranj and Hypo-Bank Burgenland AG have all recently joined TIPS as direct participants. The full list of TIPS participants and reachable parties is available on the ECB’s website.

Pan-European reach

The ECB has taken steps to ensure that TIPS has pan-European reach. Two new documents have been published to support this process: 1) a TIPS Migration Strategy for Ancillary Systems and 2) a Checklist for the onboarding of payment service providers (PSPs) to TIPS.

Non-euro area participation

Sveriges Riksbank and Danmarks Nationalbank will join TIPS with their national currencies in 2022 and 2025, respectively, at the latest. Against this background, the TIPS Non-euro Currencies Steering Group (NECSG) has been created to coordinate the views of non-euro area national central banks that have signed a cooperation agreement on the use of TIPS. The final resolutions from the TIPS NECSG meeting of 19 April 2021 and the Group’s mandate are available online.

A single instructing party settlement model has been introduced in the light of Sveriges Riksbank joining TIPS in May 2022. It offers a new settlement model for the Swedish market whereby an automated clearing house acts as the instructing party for both the originator and the beneficiary bank. All instant payments are settled in central bank money.

Stay up to date on the latest publications about TIPS via the dedicated area of the ECB’s website.