FinTech Banking Circle Taps SIA To Facilitate Payments

FinTech startup Banking Circle is tapping SIA, a subsidiary of CDP Equity, to handle its real-time payments service in Europe, The Green Sheet reported on Thursday (July 22).

Headquartered in Milan, Italy, SIA is among the European leaders in developing and managing technology infrastructures for financial institutions, businesses and central banks. The company specializes in card and merchant solutions, digital payments and more.

The company works across over 50 countries via its subsidiaries and branches in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and South Africa. SIA also has representation offices in the U.K. and Poland, per Green Sheet.

Luxembourg-based Banking Circle has offices in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark. The company chose SIA to introduce its instant payments service across Europe, linking to the TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) service of the Eurosystem.

Using the fiber optic network infrastructure, SIAnet, Banking Circle gives financial institutions and businesses in Europe the ability to facilitate instant payments — often in less than 10 seconds. Transfers can be made up to €10,000 ($11,773) per transaction and align with the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer scheme of the European Payments Council (EPC).

“Banking Circle is making cross border payments faster and more cost effective for banks and payments businesses, in turn enhancing the service they provide to their customers. Instant payments is a crucial part of this,” said Michael Boel, head of Local Clearing, Banking Circle, per Green Sheet.

“We believe that being the first bank to utilise SIA’s network and cloud integration options sends a clear message that we are committed to getting as close as possible to central banks, Automated Clearing Houses and Clearing and Settlement Mechanisms,” Boel added.

The partnership with SIA also enables Banking Circle customers to “benefit from the concession granted by the European Central Bank to SIA and Colt as Network Service Providers for ESMIG (Eurosystem Single Market Infrastructure Gateway),” per the report.

Ginny Chappell, senior vice president, digital payments at FIS, told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster that some 40 percent of big accounts at legacy financial institutions can’t send or receive real-time payments.