Instant Payments

Full Title or Meme

Instant Payments are payments that settle instantly, like the transfer of cash from one person to another.

Problems

• Instant payment share with cash a vulnerability to theft that cannot be tracked or reversed if detected.

Examples

India

The UPI-Lite wallet currently processes about ten million transactions a month. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) increased the transaction limit from ₹200 to ₹500 (2.5 to 6 US dollars) and announced the intention to support offline payments with Near Field Communication (NFC). The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is a smartphone application for banking, regulated by the RBI, enabling instant payments leveraging the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) and the Aadhaar (Indian Digital Identity) Enabled Payment System (AEPS). UPI-Lite enables storing up to ₹2000 on a smartphone and use that amount for simple payments with no need for additional identification. -- Rosa Giovanna Barresi paytm LIPI lite

China

A comparison with China's e-CNY is made somewhat easier as the two populations are nearly equal (India's 1.42 billion against China's 1.41). So we start with the October 2021 official data: at that time 123 million individual wallets were open with a total GMV of RMB 142 million (19 million USD). India's numbers after a year are 10 million wallets with a total GMV of 33 million USD (₹ 280 crore).

Europe

The Berlin Group published SCT Inst for cards in 2024-01-09

The European banking industry has implemented the SCT Inst scheme to support a pan-European instant payment. Within this scheme, funds are made available to the creditor within seconds. The financial risks for these transactions in the interbank sphere are managed by the settlement system between the related debtor and creditor banks. In a White Paper approach, Berlin Group had analysed how to use SCT Inst for the reconciliation and settlement of card transactions by extending the processes and formats used for SCT Inst to the requirements of settling single card transactions directly through the infrastructure by changing the today's pull mechanism between the acquirers of card transactions and the issuers of cards. The White Paper aimed to progress further thinking in the Berlin Group work on meeting the vision of European regulators regarding the usage of SCT Inst as the new normal for mass payments in a transparent way towards the European payments industry.