Starting next year, all institutions that provide bank transfer services will be required to provide immediate transfers, a tool that allows money to be received in an account just seconds after a payment order. And, unlike what happens today, the commissions charged for these cannot be higher than those charged for normal transfers.
The rule results from a new community regulation, approved this year by the European Parliament and now highlighted in the most recent Payment Systems Report, published this Thursday by Banco de Portugal. The intention was already old. It was at the beginning of 2021 that the European Commission began studying the adoption of a new regulation that would encourage the use of immediate transfers. Three years later, and after public consultations, contributions from various entities and discussion between the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council, the new regulation is in force and the changes will take effect from next year. The aim is to promote the widespread adoption of immediate transfers, making them more accessible.
There are two main changes: on the one hand, all institutions that provide bank transfers (so-called credit transfers, commonly used by most customers, which allow money to be received in the recipient’s account 24 hours after the payment order) will be obliged to also make immediate transfers available. On the other hand, the charges for this service will have to be equivalent to those for credit transfers, which means that banks will not be able to charge more commissions for immediate transfers than those they charge for other transfers.
The new rules will be applied in two stages. On January 9, 2025, institutions will be required to guarantee equalization of charges and accept receiving immediate transfers. As of October 9, 2025, all will also be required to allow their customers to send immediate transfers.
Banks will also be subject to control to ensure that commissions are not increased before the new rules come into force. Specifically, Banco de Portugal will monitor the average value of commissions charged for credit transfers between 2016 and 2022, comparing them with the values applied when the new rules were applied.
In Portugal, the vast majority of banks that allow credit transfers already offer this immediate transfer service. Among the largest banks, Banco CTT is the one that still does not offer immediate transfers. Also, some agricultural boxes still do not do this. Therefore, for the majority of bank customers, there will be no substantial changes in this aspect, as a large proportion already have access to immediate transfers.
The big difference will be in the cost of this service, which will have to be equated to normal transfers. In Portugal, as a general rule, immediate transfers cost more than 1 euro per operation, one of the factors that, in fact, have contributed to this tool not being adopted by customers. In 2023, according to the Payment Systems Report, the use of immediate transfers increased by 33% in quantity and value, compared to the previous year, but these continued to represent only 5.2% of total transfers made in Portugal , well below the European average, which is 15.5%.
Transfers with mobile number in June
There is also another new feature in payment systems that is about to become available in Portugal this year: from June onwards, it will be possible to transfer money between banks, using only the recipient’s mobile phone number and without needing to know the your IBAN.
This new feature, now dubbed “proxy lookup” (but which will have a new name when the project is launched), will allow for both credit and immediate transfers, from the banks’ various channels (such as mobile applications, homebanking and branches), simply entering the recipient’s mobile phone number, or, in the case of companies, the legal entity identification number, without having to enter the IBAN.
The tool will become available on June 24th and, by mid-September, all institutions that provide transfer services will have to offer this service. Its use will depend on customer compliance, meaning the new functionality will not be available automatically.
This service will be similar to the one provided in Portugal by MB Way. In this case, however, it will not be necessary for both parties involved in an operation (the one who sends and the one who receives the money) to have to install any additional application (as is the case with MB Way, where transfers can only be made between users of this application). This is because all banks operating in Portugal will have to make this tool available on their various channels, as the functionality will be included in the SICOI service package (the retail payments system managed by BdP and which is used by banks). In other words, if they want to participate in the Portuguese payment system, banks will be obliged to provide this service.
At the same time, the use of this tool cannot have any additional cost, in addition to what is already charged by banks for making a transfer. In the case of MB Way, there are additional costs, depending on the value of the operations.
This year, another new feature will bring consumers more security when transferring money. From May 20th, the identity of the recipient of each transfer will be confirmed across all bank channels, in order to prevent money being sent to the wrong recipients. In practice, when a transfer is initiated and an IBAN (or mobile phone number, when this functionality becomes available) is entered, before being able to authorize the transfer, the consumer will be able to confirm the name of the recipient account holder.
