Swedish Central Bank Opens Consultation on Instant Payments

Sweden’s Riksbank has invited participants in the RIX system, and other interested parties, to give their views on possible changes to the Riksbank’s range of settlement services. The payments landscape in Sweden and in other jurisdictions is undergoing a transformation. One aspect is the increased use of real-time payments, where a payment is credited to the payee’s account and confirmed to the payer within a few seconds after the initiation of the payment.

One of the Riksbank’s objectives is to promote a safe and efficient payments system. As it can be assumed that more payments – and in larger values – in the future will be made as instant payments, this payment method will grow in systemic importance. Hence, a safe and cost-efficient infrastructure for the settlement of instant payments will become an increasingly important element of the payment landscape. In this context, the Riksbank has taken note that the Eurosystem will launch the Target Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) platform later in 2018 and that TIPS will have the technical capacity to settle payments in non-euro currencies. Therefore the Riksbank is specifically interested in how the market views an arrangement whereby settlement of instant payments in Swedish kronor is made available on the TIPS platform.