Luxembourg’s six major retail banks have confirmed that they will offer instant euro payments as required under new EU laws.
The regulations require banks and payment service providers that offer standard credit transfers to also offer instant payments 24/7. BIL, Spuerkeess, Raiffeisen, BGL BNP Paribas, and ING Luxembourg confirmed that they already support instant payments, while Post Finance mentioned that its systems will be ready for access by customers between 16 and 23 October.
Complying with new EU laws
The changes come as the EU Instant Payments Regulation, adopted in 2024 and aimed at making fast, 24/7 payments standard across the EEA, started its first phase in January 2025. This required institutions to be able to receive instant transfers. The second phase is now in motion, requiring banks to also send such payments. The payments will be available at the same price as traditional SEPA credit transfers.
Additionally, banks are required to introduce a confirmation of payee mechanism, which warns customers if the name and the IBAN of the recipient don’t match, and to screen users daily against the EU sanctions list, rather than checking each transaction in real-time. The ABBL mentioned that the launch of instant payments can pose several challenges for institutions, such as upgrading legacy infrastructure for batch processing, managing liquidity on weekends, ensuring real-time compliance with anti-fraud and AML regulations, and dealing with the high cost of implementation.
The implementation also aims to pave the way for the introduction of Wero, an app that will replace Payconiq and work for all retail banks using a single platform. The brand name will disappear by the end of 2026, while its own application will continue to exist. Wero will focus on making pan-European instant payments and transfers possible in the long term, as in Belgium, it has been integrated into the apps of the four major banks. This development raised multiple questions about the future of Bancontact Payconiq and the relevance of national payment systems. Wero is expected to offer the same and more functionalities as Payconiq, but on a European scale. In the region of the Netherlands and France, the banks have already decided that Wero will eventually take the place of their national systems.
