The usage of electronic payment methods has increased rapidly in recent months, driven not least by the requirements of the covid-19 pandemic. With the use of giro-/maestro card payments and credit card payments, as well as new innovations like contactless payments and mobile phone apps, customers already have many different methods at their disposal. Only payment by invoice has not yet arrived in the digital age as data still has to be transferred manually through online banking or even on a transfer receipt. However, this would make the payment process much easier.

To move this forward, the European Payments Council (EPC) will be introducing the new SEPA payment standard Request to Pay (R2P) at the end of the year 2020 in alignment with the launch of the SEPA R2P scheme.