Aruba’s Banks Move To Real Time Payments

All of the banks in Aruba have switched to instant payments (IP) through the use of the Clearing and Settlement Mechanism (IP CSM) of the Centrale Bank van Aruba (CBA), according to a release.

The scheme was implemented through equensWorldline, a subsidiary of Worldline, a payments and transactional services company.

The new payment structure is led by the CBA. The island has gone completely from batch payments to instant payments. As a result, all interbank payments in Aruban florin that originated in Aruba can be processed instantly.

The project to modernize the payment infrastructure in Aruba was started a few years ago, and the release said it was a difficult project to tackle.

“A major challenge lay in the fact that the entire banking community of all domestic and international banks in Aruba had to switch to instant payments in a ‘big bang’. The CBA partnered with equensWorldline because of its decades-long experience with interbank payments processing and its proven track record with real-time payments processing, as the largest instant payments processor (in Europe),” the release said.

The CBA noted that equensWorldline understood what was required for the community to excel and that it implemented the new system to meet the specific needs of the region.

Michael Steinbach, CEO at equensWorldline, said the switch to instant payments was an important milestone for both Aruba and the company.

“With the go-live in Aruba, we established an important milestone for our company at a global level. This is fully in line with our global ambitions, as the market in which we operate is clearly no longer European, but global,” noted Steinbach. “Following this first step in Aruba, we will continue to further expand our international footprint, inside and outside of Europe. Furthermore, this project shows once again that instant payments are truly becoming the new normal, not only at a European level, but also on a global scale.”