While SEPA Instant has been available since 2017, early adoption was slow and uneven. 

Participation was voluntary, the fees were often higher, and coverage was fragmented by country and institution. Even when faster payments existed, customers had to actively choose them. As a result, in 2018, instant payments accounted for just 0.08% of EU credit transfers, and by 2023, they remained below 20%. 

The Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) is changing this by mandating universal availability of instant payments for euro‑denominated credit transfers, and fee parity between SEPA Credit and SEPA Instant. 

Our latest research, ‘SEPA Instant: Build it and they will come,’ produced in collaboration with Celent, suggests that the IPR will accelerate the move to real-time payments by removing much of the historic friction. 

The research forecasts that by 2035, most credit transfers will be instant: every institution surveyed expects at least two-thirds of SEPA Credit volumes to move to SEPA Instant.  

In fact, the tipping point is sooner. The research forecasts that SEPA Instant volumes will overtake SEPA Credit by 2030, then accelerate further. SEPA Instant is poised to capture a larger share of the growing payments pie and, by 2035, will become the second-most used non-cash payment type, behind cards, representing 18% of all eurozone payments. 

In this article, I’ll examine the factors behind this shift, including the proportion of traditional credit transfers (SCT) that become instant and whether SEPA Instant will take market share away from other payment types. 

When institutions were asked to forecast adoption over time, a consistent pattern emerged. While near‑term estimates tend to be conservative, expectations rise sharply over the second half of the decade.  

By around 2030, many believe SEPA Instant volumes will overtake SEPA Credit volumes. From that point on, instant payments are expected to pull decisively ahead. This is not driven by optimism alone, as several structural forces converge around that timeframe: 

• all regulatory phases will be complete 
• operational maturity will have improved 
• customer familiarity will be established 
• remaining barriers to migration will be minimal 

Many other factors could drive these volumes further and faster. 

For example, initially, the SEPA Instant limit was set at €100,000 per transaction. Other instant payment systems have limits measured in millions, broadening their possible uses. Under the IPR, payments of up to €999,999,999 can now be made via SEPA Instant, matching SEPA Credit.  

This opens many new opportunities, as case studies from around the world have shown how instant payments can unlock innovative new bank products, such as automatically triggering payment execution. 

What matters for institutions is not precision forecasting, but preparedness for acceleration. History suggests that once confidence builds, migration can outpace even optimistic projections. 

However, adoption and volume growth are likely to arrive in steps. For example, retail payment behaviours may shift more gradually, driven by user‑experience changes rather than conscious choice. 

For SEPA Instant to become the second-most-used non-cash payment type after cards, with annual transaction volume in the tens of billions, the volume will come from multiple sources. The more interesting question is which payment flows will shift – and why. 

The largest and most predictable source of SEPA Instant volume growth is straightforward: existing SEPA Credit Transfers. 

Once instant payments are universally available and priced the same as SEPA Credit, there’s little incentive for customers to choose slower execution, and institutions have fewer reasons to maintain parallel default options. 

This alone accounts for a significant proportion of expected growth. Most institutions surveyed anticipate that the majority of current SEPA Credit volumes will migrate to SEPA Instant over the next decade. 

This migration is structural rather than behavioural. Customers do not need to change what they do; only the speed of the payment changes. 

The largest and most predictable source of SEPA Instant volume growth is straightforward: existing SEPA Credit Transfers. 

Once instant payments are universally available and priced the same as SEPA Credit, there’s little incentive for customers to choose slower execution, and institutions have fewer reasons to maintain parallel default options. 

This alone accounts for a significant proportion of expected growth. Most institutions surveyed anticipate that the majority of current SEPA Credit volumes will migrate to SEPA Instant over the next decade. 

This migration is structural rather than behavioural. Customers do not need to change what they do; only the speed of the payment changes. 

Corporate payments represent a disproportionate share of value and volume. Large corporates, public sector bodies and treasury operations are particularly sensitive to settlement speed and certainty. In these environments: 

• instant execution simplifies reconciliation 
• liquidity can be used more efficiently 
• operational risk from delayed settlement is reduced 

Even limited adoption among corporates could generate meaningful volume growth. A single migration by a large enterprise, government department or utility provider could move hundreds of thousands, or millions, of payments into SEPA Instant in months. For example, the UK sees a spike in Pay by Bank payments at the end of the tax year because HMRC offers this as a payment option. 

This is why many institutions see corporate adoption, rather than retail behaviour, as the early accelerator of instant payment volumes. 

One of the most strategically significant sources of future volume lies beyond credit transfers. Instant payments increasingly compete with cards in certain e‑commerce and digital payment scenarios, particularly where: 

• merchants want immediate confirmation of funds 
• settlement speed reduces delivery or fulfilment risk 
• cost sensitivity favours account‑to‑account payments 

As open banking, A2A wallets and request‑to‑pay models mature, SEPA Instant becomes a natural settlement layer beneath those experiences. One significant factor to consider is the European Payments Initiative’s (EPI) Wero wallet, which is gaining traction, with key acquisitions such as iDEAL in the Netherlands and a growing number of banks and PSPs joining in the last 18 months.  

EPI has also announced a partnership with the European Payments Alliance (EuroPA), a consortium of national and regional payment service providers including Italy’s Bancomat, Spain’s Bizum, Poland’s Blik, and Vipps MobilePay, to focus on interoperability for cross-border transactions. Coupled with a political desire to move to more European-based payment systems, and away from dominance of the traditional US networks, EPI and the local A2A wallets have the potential to drive significant additional growth in SEPA Instant. 

This does not imply wholesale displacement of cards. Consumer behaviour is deeply ingrained, and card schemes continue to offer powerful protections and incentives. But even modest shifts – for example, a small percentage of card volumes moving to instant, account‑based payments – will have an outsized impact on SEPA Instant volumes. 

Perhaps an under‑appreciated driver is entirely new payment behaviour. As commerce becomes increasingly driven by APIs, workflows and software agents, payments are increasingly triggered by events rather than initiated by humans. 

Real‑time, programmable payments enable use cases that were previously impractical or uneconomic: 

• automated stage payments linked to delivery or milestones 
• just‑in‑time supplier settlement 
• embedded payments triggered by digital workflows rather than invoices 

In that context, instant payments are well-suited for agent-initiated payments, as they can be triggered automatically, settle predictably and immediately, and operate continuously without cutoff times. 

Agent‑initiated payments are therefore more likely to amplify the use of SEPA Instant than replace it. However, they also change the nature of demand. Volumes may grow through higher-frequency, lower‑value transactions, placing new pressure on scalability, pricing, and fraud monitoring. 

While much of this is currently hypothetical, current trends suggest that it would be a mistake to ignore the increased role of agentic commerce payments over the next decade. 

As SEPA Instant absorbs volume from multiple sources, it increasingly competes with legacy SEPA Credit and other payment types. 

This blending of use cases is what ultimately reshapes the market. It is also why instant payments should be viewed not merely as a faster rail, but as foundational infrastructure for the next phase of European payments. 

There are some clear implications. 

Primarily, are the SEPA Instant solutions in place today capable of handling such rapid transaction growth?  

According to the Celent research, 62% of banks are adapting existing systems. If those systems weren’t designed for instant payments, these banks could soon face scaling issues. While it seems unlikely, given how many banks already offer instant payments, it can’t be ruled out. 

More likely, the banks will have adapted existing instant payment solutions to make them SEPA Instant compliant. What is less clear is whether those solutions, and associated processes, have been resized to accommodate rapid growth. Banks procure payment systems with volume forecasts to guide the solution and assess their scalability; for many, these will have pre-dated the regulation.  

It’s also important to note that scaling affects API scalability and availability, overall availability (to deliver true 24/7x365 processing), associated services - such as fraud monitoring and detection – and operational staffing.

Payment history suggests that once foundational infrastructure becomes real‑time, always‑on and programmable, it invites experimentation. By the end of this decade, instant euro payments will feel unremarkable. The opportunity lies in what institutions do once that baseline is established. 

If 20% of cards and direct debits, as well as all the remaining SEPA Credit transactions, were to migrate to SEPA Instant – a hypothetical but not entirely unrealistic scenario – the SEPA Instant volumes by 2035 would exceed 90 billion transactions. 

The implications of this growth are significant. The move to instant payments is a catalyst for broader operational transformation. It will require robust, resilient systems capable of processing payments in seconds (always ≤10 seconds end-to-end), 24/7, 365 days a year. 

Overall, the move to instant payments in Europe is accelerating a broader transformation towards real-time, intelligent banking. Compliance with IPR is merely the first step.  

Firms investing in scalable technology, robust fraud management, and innovative customer experiences will be best positioned to thrive in a real-time, intelligent banking environment.  

The real winners will be businesses and consumers, as institutions build on instant payments, creating seamless, secure, and intelligent payment experiences where money moves as fast as information and banking truly happens in an instant.