Euro Retail Payments Board

The Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB) is a high-level strategic body tasked with fostering the integration, innovation and competitiveness of euro retail payments in the European Union. It was launched on 19 December 2013 by the ECB and replaced the SEPA Council.

Achievements

Since its launch, the ERPB has been instrumental in removing some of the remaining national characteristics after migration to the SEPA credit transfer and direct debit schemes. It has also played a pivotal role in ensuring that new payment solutions have not led to further fragmentation of the euro retail payments market.

The ERPB has facilitated the development of an integrated, innovative and competitive euro retail payments market in the following areas:

• Instant payments: Under the impetus of the ERPB, the European Payments Council introduced a scheme for instant payments. The scheme went live in November 2017 and provides the basis for pan-European instant payments in euro.
• Payment initiation services: The ERPB established a working group to define the technical, operational and business requirements for payment initiation services. These market requirements complement the legal requirements of the Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and are essential to ensure the services work efficiently across the whole of Europe.
• P2P mobile payments: To facilitate interoperability at pan-European level between existing and future person-to-person (P2P) mobile payment solutions, the ERPB has begun working on a standardised lookup service that allows mobile phone numbers to be used as proxies for IBANs.
• Contactless payments: The ERPB has made recommendations to support its vision of developing a Europe-wide secure, convenient, consistent, efficient and trusted payment experience for customers for all retail transactions at the point of interaction, based on commonly accepted and standardised contactless and other proximity payment technologies.

In close cooperation with the European Cards Stakeholders Group, the ERPB has also successfully addressed the need for further harmonisation in the field of card payments.

Organisation

The ERPB is chaired by a high-level representative of the ECB and comprises the following members:

• on the supply side of the market:
  1. one representative from the payment services provider community;
  2. three banking representatives;
  3. two representatives from payment institutions;
  4. one e-money representative.
• on the demand side of the market, two consumer representatives and one representative from each of the following stakeholder categories:
  1. retailers with a physical presence;
  2. internet retailers;
  3. businesses/corporates;
  4. small and medium-sized enterprises, and
  5. national public administrations.

In addition, five national central banks (NCBs) representing the Eurosystem, and one NCB representing the non-euro NCB community take part in ERPB meetings on a rotational basis. The European Commission is invited to attend these meetings as an observer.

List of ERPB related publications

The ERPB reports annually on its activities, common positions, guidance and/or statements adopted in the previous year as well as on its objectives and deliverables for the following year.

• Annual report of the Euro Retail Payments Board 2020-2021
• Annual report of the Euro Retail Payments Board 2019-2020
• ERPB response to the Commission’s consultation on a retail payments strategy for the EU – June 2020
• Annual report of the Euro Retail Payments Board 2018-2019
• Annual report of the Euro Retail Payments Board 2017-2018
• Annual report of the Euro Retail Payments Board 2016-2017
• Annual report of the Euro Retail Payments Board 2015-2016
• ERPB response to the Commission’s Green Paper on retail financial services – March 2016
• Annual report of the Euro Retail Payments Board 2014-2015
• Record of past ERPB recommendations