Free transactions “in less than 10 seconds”, regardless of your bank. The European Council and Parliament adopted a regulation on March 13 requiring banks to offer free instant transfers. They must be able to receive these transfers from January 8, 2025 and issue them no later than October 8, 2025.
What does it consist of?
“The instant transfer allows the execution of fund transfers in euros almost in real time for the beneficiary of the payment, at any time and through a service available continuously, seven days a week and 24 hours a day,” specifies the committee national means of payment in its press release.
Today, only 25 banks out of 128 in France offer instant transfers free of charge, such as the Postal Bank, Crédit Mutuel or BoursoBank, the others most often charging 1 euro, reports the site Digitals. A figure which explains that only 6.4% of transfers made in France in 2023 were instantaneous, according to a study by the Banque de France observatory. The Wero payment solution, developed by 14 major European banks to replace Paylib, was deployed in France in 2024.
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What risks?
The payment is irrevocable in the sense that there can be no recall of funds in the event of a recipient error since it is made immediately. But, as part of the deployment of this system, payment service providers are required to offer free of charge a systematic mechanism for confirming the consistency between the name of the beneficiary and the IBAN entered.
In its 2023 payment means security observatory report, the Banque de France notes “the continued decline in fraud on Internet payments, but also on mobile payments, the fraud rate of which has been divided by three thanks to the systematic use of strong authentication of the cardholder when enrolling their card in a mobile solution.”
What objectives at European level?
The National Committee for Means of Payment welcomes these developments. “They will also contribute to strengthening the strategic autonomy of the European financial sector by helping pan-European payment solution projects to emerge while sustaining the use of sovereign, national and European payment infrastructures,”
