EBA Clearing's RT1 platform for SEPA instant credit transfers settled an average of 7.0 billion euros per day in December 2025, nearly three times the 2.4 billion euros recorded twelve months earlier. Daily transaction volumes rose in parallel, from 3.66 million in January 2025 to 6.29 million in December, a 72 percent increase that accelerated sharply in the fourth quarter.
The inflection point came in October. For the first three quarters of 2025, RT1 volume grew at a steady pace, climbing from 3.66 million daily transactions in January to 4.78 million in September, with daily settlement values ranging between 2.4 and 3.8 billion euros. Two regulatory events then hit simultaneously: on October 5, the European Payments Council's updated SCT Inst rulebook raised the maximum transaction amount from 100,000 euros to 999,999,999.99 euros, and on October 9, the EU Instant Payments Regulation's sending mandate required all eurozone payment service providers to offer instant payment initiation.
October's daily averages immediately jumped to 5.6 million transactions at 5.0 billion euros, a one-month value increase of 32 percent from September. November pushed to 5.96 million at 5.7 billion euros. December closed the year at 6.29 million transactions and 7.0 billion euros in daily settlement value, with a single-day record of 9.6 million transactions on December 1 and a Black Friday spike of 9.1 million on November 28.
The value growth outpaced volume growth by a wide margin. While transaction counts rose 72 percent over the year, daily settlement values rose 192 percent. This gap reflects the structural impact of removing the 100,000 euro cap. Corporate treasuries, high-value transfers, and transactions that previously defaulted to standard SEPA credit transfers now had a viable instant channel. The cap removal effectively repositioned SCT Inst from a consumer product to an enterprise-grade payment rail.
European Central Bank payments statistics from the first half of 2025 showed instant credit transfers reaching 23 percent of euro area credit transfer volume, up from 16 percent in the second half of 2024. That seven-percentage-point jump occurred before the sending mandate took effect, driven solely by the receiving mandate that required all eurozone PSPs to accept instant payments from January 9. The October sending mandate is expected to push the share considerably higher when second-half data is published.
RT1 operates alongside two other pan-European clearing and settlement mechanisms for SCT Inst: STEP2-T, also run by EBA Clearing, and the ECB's TARGET Instant Payment Settlement, which provides settlement in central bank money. RT1 and STEP2-T interoperate with TIPS, giving participating PSPs access to settlement finality through central bank accounts. As of March 2026, RT1 has 92 direct SCT Inst participants across the eurozone.
January 2026 data shows RT1 processing 6.1 million transactions per day at 6.4 billion euros, slightly below December's peak but well above the pre-mandate baseline. The seasonal pattern visible in earlier years, where January volumes typically dip from December highs, appears compressed: January 2026 retained 97 percent of December's volume, compared to a typical January decline of 5 to 10 percent in prior years.
Non-eurozone EEA payment service providers face receiving and sending mandates of their own in January and July 2027 respectively, which will extend the adoption curve into Scandinavia, Central Europe, and the Western Balkans.