This course will explore one of the most recent development in European payments that istransforming the industry landscape: real-time payments. The key focus is an in-depth analysis of what real-time payments are, how they function and differ from bulk payments, which business opportunities they entail, which future scenarios are more likely to occur, and how they relate with recent trends like open banking (PSD2). 

The course will be structured in four different sections: the first section will provide an introduction on interbank payments, payments stakeholders, and bulk clearing processes. Section 2 will outlinethe general characteristics of real-time payments and will bring evidence throughspecific case studies; the section will then move on listing some of the mainreal-time use cases and expected trends. Section 3 will talk aboutopen bankingandrecent European legislation such as PSD2with a particular emphasis on the new actors, threats, and opportunitiesarising from them. Finally, section 4 will offer considerations on howreal-time payments and open banking combined will affect the market and incumbents.