Payment Explorer

SEPA Instant

How does €100 travel from France to Germany?

SCT Inst checkout: the rail itself (TIPS or RT1), no proxy/wallet overlay. A €100 instant euro transfer France → Germany: Verification of Payee, funds in ≤10 seconds.

SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) is the scheme rulebook for euro credit transfers that must settle in seconds, not on the next TARGET clearing cycle. The payer’s bank (or a PISP initiating on their behalf) builds a pacs.008 with Local Instrument INST and submits it to an instant CSM such as TIPS or RT1. The creditor PSP must accept or reject inside the scheme SLA — typically within a few seconds — so the debtor can be told the money has arrived.

Before the pacs.008 leaves, many corridors now run Verification of Payee (VoP / Confirmation of Payee): the debtor name is checked against the creditor IBAN so a mistyped beneficiary is caught early. After settlement, both sides may see camt.054 notifications; recalls use camt.056 and may end in pacs.004. OpenFinance walks that path hop by hop with sample ISO 20022 payloads — educational only, not a live rail.

Scheme SEPA Instant Credit Transfer

Read the numbered story first. The switches change the situation. When a step is clear, open a technical trace to see the messages banks send.

Payer country

Where the payer’s account is. Cut-off times and the usual network can change.

Who starts it

The payer at their own bank, or a payment app they authorised (a PISP).

Which network

The system between banks that actually moves the money — not the app you tap.

How it ends

The money arrives, the other bank refuses, nobody answers in time, or a bank later asks to reverse a credit (recall).

Actor labels

Plain names (Payer / Beneficiary), ops shorthand (Orig / Bene), or ISO account sides (Dbtr / Cdtr). On SDD the creditor is Orig.

Compare with

Same €100, other scheme — see which hops differ.

What this country changes for the payer’s bank.

Cut-off

SCT batch cut-offs follow your bank’s STEP2 submission window (often late afternoon on TARGET days). Instant is 24/7.

Reachability

Euro SCT / SCT Inst reachability is near-universal in SEPA. French ASPSPs are widely on TIPS and/or RT1.

Local notes

STET PSD2 API is common for PISP initiation in France; clearing remains EPC ISO 20022.

  1. 01

    Payer→Payer’s bank

    €100t+0≤10 seconds end-to-end

    The payer chooses an instant euro transfer of €100.

    Customer instant instruction (pain.001 / bank channel)

  2. 02

    Payer’s bank→Beneficiary’s bank

    before authorisation

    The payer’s bank checks that the name matches the beneficiary IBAN (Verification of Payee).

    VoP acmt.023 request → acmt.024 MTCH/CMTC/NMTC

  3. 03

    Payer’s bank→Clearing / settlement

    secondsScheme clock running

    The payer’s bank sends the instant payment into TIPS or RT1.

    pacs.008 LclInstrm=INST, ClrSys=TIPS|RT1

  4. 04

    Clearing / settlement→Beneficiary’s bank

    The instant rail delivers the payment to the beneficiary’s bank.

    pacs.008 forwarded to creditor PSP

  5. 05

    Beneficiary’s bank→Clearing / settlement

    Inside the 10-second window

    The beneficiary’s bank accepts; €100 is available at once.

    pacs.002 TxSts=ACSC (only ACSC ends the happy path)

  6. 06

    Clearing / settlement→Payer’s bank

    The payer’s bank is told the transfer settled.

    pacs.002 ACSC to debtor PSP

  7. 07

    Beneficiary’s bank→Beneficiary

    ≤10s

    The beneficiary sees the credit immediately.

    camt.054 credit notification

Go deeper

The same journey as ISO 20022 messages. Open one when you want the sequence and the XML.

Try in live showcase