CaixaBank, BBVA, and Iberpay Test SEPA Request to Pay
Hey Digital Banking Fanatic!
Some changes in the finance world happen with a bang. Others, like this one, unfold quietly, just a few lines in a press release, a new button on your banking app. But behind the scenes, they carry the weight of deep structural shifts.
CaixaBank, BBVA, and Iberpay have just launched SEPA’s Request to Pay, which may become a turning point for European payments. Their pilot is the first interbank rollout of the scheme, a system that lets users send and approve payment requests directly through their banking apps, with instant confirmation and settlement.
Unlike traditional payment requests that often rely on emails, PDF invoices, or waiting days for confirmation, this scheme offers near-instant settlement, available 24/7. Once approved, payments are executed in seconds. Utility bills, school fees, subscriptions, and even B2B or public-sector payments could be streamlined into a single, user-initiated flow.
CaixaBank has already run more than 350,000 internal operations using the scheme, mostly to recover returned bills. BBVA is adapting the technology for broader use cases, including payments initiated via tax ID rather than IBAN.
The infrastructure behind this is connected to both Iberpay’s national system and EBA Clearing, meaning it’s built for scale. More than 4,500 banks in 40 countries can technically connect, which would reach over 800 million accounts. It’s still early, let’s keep an eye on how this unfolds.
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