SEPA instant started November 2017. I have 3 banks in 2 SEPA countries, none of them is participating. Not that I would need it, because SEPA transfers which are "free", mandatorily offered by every bank and take only 1 banking day. But there could be use cases for instantaneously.

https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...

Not until 2019 did central banks started to ask banks to implement SEPA instant.

Normal SEPA does not work in weekends just like ACH even though the core process is moving XML files to an shared FTP server.

SEPA instant could be starting point for mobile based payments in Eurozone which is currently not present in anyway.

A whole day? That's absolute madness. Why does it take a day when money is electronic and nothing has to physically move?

The basic working is this,

you give a SEPA transfer order to your bank in the afternoon.

Your bank consolidates all the transfers for the day in a big XML file and puts it in an ftp server in the evening.

Bundesbank pull it from there and puts the XML file in other banks ftp server.

Other bank pull it from there and completes the transaction.

In case the account does not exist or something happens the whole thing has to happen again to get your money back.

This is similar to BACS in UK.

Man the EU really needs to mandate compliance with SEPA Instant. Quite tragic that three years later and customers are still waiting on batch processes. FPS really is lush.

In Estonia all the large banks have implemented it, and they don't charge for sending the payments either. All payments are by default instant.