The ECB's TARGET Services Annual Report revealed that TIPS settled approximately 1.35 billion instant payment transactions in 2024, a five-fold increase year-on-year. The daily average number of instant payments in euro surged 72% over the year.
Growth Drivers
The dramatic increase reflects both organic adoption growth and the regulatory push from the Instant Payments Regulation receiving mandate (effective January 2025). As eurozone banks brought instant payment receiving capability online to meet the deadline, TIPS transaction volumes accelerated through the second half of 2024.
Context
For comparison, Europe's instant payment volumes are now approaching the scale of established systems like UK Faster Payments, though still significantly behind Asian leaders like India's UPI or Brazil's PIX. The October 2025 sending mandate is expected to drive another major step-up in volumes through 2025 and 2026.
What This Means
The five-fold growth validates the EU's regulatory approach to instant payment adoption. Infrastructure capacity is scaling - TIPS can handle over 2,000 transactions per second with sub-second settlement. For banks still treating instant payments as a secondary channel, these volumes signal that batch-based SEPA credit transfers will increasingly become the exception rather than the norm.
Source: ECB