EBA at a glance
Our mission
The Euro Banking Association (EBA) brings payments practitioners together to harmonise and advance Europe’s payments ecosystem. We assess the impact of regulation, new trends and technologies, create
market practices and learn from one another. This collaborative space helps our member and stakeholder community to drive progress, making payments better for European consumers and businesses.
Our activities
The EBA activities cover four core areas:
- Thought Leadership & Innovation: advancing the understanding of new market trends through working groups, task forces and open fora.
- Market Practices & Regulatory Guidance: providing guidance on market regulation and implementation through practitioners' panels.
- Networking & Events: fostering pan-European practitioner exchange through EBAday and other events.
- Training & Education: providing training & educational services on relevant payments and transaction banking topics to the EBA community through the EBA Academy programme.
Where we come from
The EBA was founded in 1985 by 18 commercial banks and the European Investment Bank with the support of the European Commission.
The EBA's original mission was to promote the ECU and to facilitate its use by developing and managing the ECU Clearing System.
As owner and operator of the ECU Clearing System, the EBA provided a forum for payment practitioners to develop a pan-European vision and roadmap in preparation of the European Monetary Union. The EBA became the incubator of pan-European payment infrastructure services for euro transactions. In close co-operation with its member banks, the EBA delivered EURO1, a large-value clearing system for euro payments, STEP1, a single payment system for commercial transactions, and STEP2, a pan-European automated clearing house (PE-ACH) processing euro retail payments in euro. All three payment systems were handed over to EBA CLEARING, the company which continues to manage and operate these systems today.
In recent years, the EBA has played a major role in actively supporting banks in their migration to the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and in other bank-driven initiatives requiring hands-on co-operation at a pan-European level. This work has included contributing to the development and improvement of pan-European business practices in co-operation with regulatory and industry bodies as well as communicating and explaining these business practices and other industry developments to the EBA community and to the wider industry.
The history of the EBA in pictures - have a look at our 40th anniversary photo collection