SEPA Request to Pay (SRTP) Ver 3.

SEPA Request to Pay (SRTP) Ver 3.

The European Payments Council propose to include SEPA Request to Pay to support?e-invoicing?& commerce?and the effective date of this third release is set to 30 November 2023.

The RTP should be considered as a part of an end-to-end user payment experience. For example, when purchasing goods and services, regardless the variety and complexity of commercial processes involved, the following basic components can be distinguished:

? Preparatory stage establishing the underlying transaction for which a payment is due.

?Creation and presentation of the RTP to the Payer.

? Acceptance or Refusal of the RTP. The Customer (Payer) can accept the RTP – and this Acceptance can be followed by an immediate or future payment - or refuse it.

?Payment process, starting with the initiation of the payment and selection/confirmation of the payment instrument, followed by the execution of the payment after customer Authentication as appropriate.

Participants and Roles

The four types of roles involved in the Scheme include:

? Payee

? Payer

? Payee’s RTP Service Provider

? Payer’s RTP Service Provider

The RTP Scheme

Request-to-Pay (RTP) is developing into a collective term for digital payment requests through which, after confirmation by the payer, a transfer is triggered on the basis of the data contained in the request. To foster the use of interbank transactions in the SEPA area and to offer customer-friendly use cases on this basis, the relevance of request-to-pay was recognized, and a working group was formed with the so-called multi-stakeholder group. With the publication of an RTP framework in November 2019, this group defined the solution space and concretized it with the publication of a set of rules in November 2020, whereby care was taken to address the broadest possible number of use cases (e.g. payments at the physical point of sale or in e-commerce). The RTP Scheme does not primarily pursue an economic interest, i.e. no license fees are due for its application. Figure 2?shows the simplified process flow and its main characteristics.

Key facts

• The growth of e-commerce and POS non-cash payments has accelerated significantly; in particular, established international card organizations and closed loop platforms have benefited from these developments
• Various attempts have already been made to establish alternatives for everyday payments in the SEPA area - so far, however, with limited success
• Outside the SEPA area, however, there are successful solutions enabling payments, initiated by the recipient requesting for conventional account-to-account transactions
• The European Payment Council (EPC) has recognized the relevance of such payment requests for the SEPA area as well, and has been coordinating the introduction of a framework and rules for Request-to-Pay (RTP) since 2018
• Embedded in an end-to-end payment instrument, RTP could offer advantages for end customers and merchants, as well as for banks, especially in terms of cost and convenience
• In addition to the classical chicken-egg dilemma, various other challenges can currently be identified that could case respective players to hesitate in product development; for example, unclear chargeback regulations or the currently limited market coverage of instant payments
• However, these challenges could dissipate in the short term, provided that the European Commission's measures proclaimed in the EU Retail Payment Strategy are implemented
• All in all, an RTP standard has a considerable potential to change the market power structure, even if sustainable success requires haste, since the competition is already actively shaping solutions

?Four corner model

?The diagram below illustrates the RTP flows for a generic, 4-corner eco-system, applied to basic use cases in physical or online retail commerce, person-to-person (P2P), or E-Invoice Presentment and Payment (EIPP) transactions (e.g., at Business-to-Customer (B2C), Business-to- Business (B2B) and Business-to Government (B2G) level). In this model both payee and Payer use their own RTP Service Provider.

?The RTP supports

? Accept now: the RTP must be accepted immediately.

? Accept later: the RTP can be accepted at a later time.

? Pay now: the RTP must be paid by the Payer immediately, at the acceptance time.

? Pay later: the payment is initiated at a later term than the acceptance time.

It also supports Rejects, Recall, Return options.

?Source: https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/sites/default/files/kb/file/2022-11/EPC014-20%20v3.0%20SEPA%20RTP%20Scheme%20Rulebook_0.pdf

https://core.se/en/blog/sepa-request-pay-innovation-driver-or-castle-air