The interbank instant payment service will temporarily be unavailable on the night of Thursday to Friday. The outage will last from 01.30 to 08.00 on Friday and any instant payments made at this time will reach the payee on Friday morning from 09.00.
During the outage on Thursday night and Friday morning, a connection will be made for the RT1 payment system to TIPS (TARGET Instant Payment Settlement), which is the other payment system designed for instant payments. The RT1 system uses the EBA Clearing clearing house that the banks in Estonia use for interbank payments. The TIPS payment system is managed by the central banks of the euro area.
The various clearing houses in Europe will be connected for instant payments in several stages, and EBA Clearing is joining TIPS in the first wave this week.
Banks offer the option of express payments alongside ordinary payments and instant payments, and these are intended principally for sending very large sums of money immediately during normal business hours. This service is notably more expensive however, and payments cannot be made through it in the evening, at night or on non-working days.