A European group of banks, including the Dutch ING Bank, has announced cooperation in regard of payment transactions, referred to as the ‘European Payments Initiative (EPI)’. The group intends to create a pan-European payment solution leveraging notably instant SEPA credit transfers that should become the new standard of payments for European consumers and merchants in all types of payment transactions.

AML-legislation is not explicitly mentioned in the article by European Banking Federation (EBF) on EPI, but also must be in the minds of the group of banks. Payments are permanently monitored by banks and payment institutions, to detect criminal activity by their clients and counterparties. The EPI-policy paper only speaks of “the constantly evolving requirements on anti-terrorist financing and anti-money laundering activities“. EBF supports the new European AML-plans that again will lead to fundamental changes in legislation and will increase the regulatory burden for SME’s.

More information:

European Payments Initiative (EPI):

• Article European Banking Federation (EBF) on EPI: European Payments Initiative is a promising step forward for payments in Europe, 2 July 2020.
• EPI press release, 2 July 2020.
• ECB press release ECB welcomes initiative to launch new European payment solution, 2 July 2020.
• European Commission press release, European payments: The European Commission welcomes the initiative by a group of 16 banks to launch a European payments initiative (EPI), 2 July 2020.
• Policy paper: Payments policy for Europe: direction for the next five years, Spring 2020.

EBF on AML:

• On 7 May 2020 EBF published EBF supports new EU plans to fight money laundering.
• EBF’s AML-proposals, March 2020.