In addition, with instant payments, it is now also possible to conduct cashless, final and fail-safe payments using our high-performance euro payment systems 365 days a year in just a matter of seconds, that is the concurrent settlement of transactions without the use of cash.
Mr Thiele, compared with instant payments, the launch of SEPA less than four years ago seems like a project from another era. And yet it was a decisive step on the road towards achieving integrated euro payments: payment transactions became faster and more efficient with SEPA, and competition between credit institutions has intensified.