BBVA participates in proof of concept to streamline ‘request to pay’ processes across Europe
Payments infrastructure company EBA CLEARING successfully completed the first pan-European proof of concept for the R2P (Request To Pay) service. This digital messaging service is designed to streamline collection processes and can help boost instant transfers and electronic billing in the region. BBVA and seven other multinational payment service providers took part in the trial. They proved capable of exchanging payment requests in milliseconds.
R2P is a pan-European digital messaging infrastructure developed by the clearing house EBA CLEARING. The system allows the issuer of a request for payment to ask for payment directly to a client ( an individual or a company), who must make payment instantaneously or on a deferred basis, as specified by the issuer. The exchange of messages is standardized according to the SEPA scheme created by the European Payments Council (EPC). It is independent of which payment infrastructures and channels are used.
In the proof of concept that the company conducted to test functionality, BBVA and the other participating institutions were able to exchange requests to pay via R2P in milliseconds. This shows that the tool can contribute to standardizing and boosting instant transfers in the European ecosystem.
During the proof of concept, the potential of the request to pay platform to digitize companies' billing processes was also tested. This includes capabilities such as automatic invoice reconciliation, improved cash flow control and cost reduction. The test has thus demonstrated the tool's potential to develop functionalities aimed not only at individual customers, but also use cases that contribute to boost e-billing by enterprises.
“Our participation in this proof of concept has been an important step for us in our efforts to provide BBVA corporate and business customers the best infrastructure solution for the exchange of requests to pay. We really appreciate EBA CLEARING's support and thank them for the opportunity to further explore the potential of request to pay. This challenge has strongly encouraged us to move ahead in the implementation of our RTP project, not only in the B2B environment, but in the B2C space too,” said Raouf Soussi, Head of Strategy for Enterprise Payments at BBVA.
“Our eight participants demonstrated how easy it is to use and integrate R2P with their end-user solutions and gave a powerful outlook on the benefits that request to pay can generate for the invoicing processes of businesses across the continent,” said Fredrik Tallqvist, Project Manager for the R2P PoC at EBA CLEARING.
The pan-European R2P infrastructure service of EBA CLEARING was developed with the support of 27 payment service providers from 11 European countries under the SEPA Request-to-Pay Scheme created by the European Payments Council (EPC). In addition to BBVA, which relied on Iberpay as a technological partner, the proof of concept also involved BNP Paribas, CaixaBank, Commerzbank, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, DZ BANK and Pine & Cone.