Central Bank of Iceland selects SIA interbank payment system

By Sunniva Kolostyak

The Central Bank of Iceland (CBI) has gone live with SIA‘s real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system and a new instant payment platform, covering both high and low-value payments.

SIA, an Italian payments services and infrastructure provider controlled by CDP Equity, is providing the CBI with a single platform infrastructure processing all types of payments, including bank-to-bank, P2P, P2B and B2B.

This will enable Iceland’s central bank to work closely with other central banks as well as manage interbank payments within the country – currently up to 1 million daily payments with peaks of 160,000 per hour, despite a population of just over 365,000.

The RTGS and instant payment platform will be able to process up to 5 million daily payments, while each transaction is on average processed in less than 40 milliseconds.

Sturla Pálsson, Director for Markets Department of the Central Bank of Iceland, commented: “An efficient and secure payment system is one of the prerequisites for smooth, normal business transactions in a modern economy. We need to use the best available tools at all times, and we are delighted with the implementation of the new interbank payment system from SIA.”

According to SIA, the launch of the new tools results in a consolidated operating model and in a higher level of efficiency in the whole country, placing the CBI in a prominent position within the evolution of digital payment infrastructures.

Also commenting, Eugenio Tornaghi, Marketing and Sales Director of SIA, said: “The successful go-live for the new interbank payment system of the Central Bank of Iceland confirms our strong partnership with Central Institutions to deliver secure, mission-critical and high-performance platforms and to enable challenging digital transformation programs in the payments ecosystem.

“SIA is continuously using its innovation capabilities to extend the opportunities for Central Institutions to target new frontiers of instant payments, interoperability with different market infrastructures and services, account to account payments and digital currencies.”