"Sparkasse Bank Malta is proud to announce the completion of another milestone development in the construction of its payments infrastructure with the acquisition of full membership and direct participation in the Step2 Sepa Credit Transfer Service  and Target2  payment systems," announced Mr Mifsud MD at Sparkasse.

"The bank believes this to be a momentous leap in the strengthening of the infrastructural foundations supporting its payment processing solutions and a strong sign of confidence in the Bank  by the European Banking institutions from whom the bank had to obtain approval and qualify for participation," he added.

"The Step2 Sepa Credit Transfer Service  is identified by the European Central Bank as a systemically important payment system  that allows for the sorting, routing, delivery, clearance and settlement of Single European Payments Area credits for all banks in Europe. Sparkasse Bank Malta now becomes one of only 175 banks globally that participates directly in this system and one of only two banks in Malta to be a direct participant," he continued.

Concurrently, he explained, that  the bank obtained membership to TARGET2  (the second generation of the Trans-European Automated Real-time Gross settlement Express Transfer system) that gives the bank  access to one of the largest payment systems globally with over 1,004 direct participants processing an average of over 343,000 payments daily and average daily value of 1.8 trillion euro.

"While being evidence of the reputational, governance and systemic qualities characterising the Bank's business, the bank is confident that these new platforms will allow it to continue enhancing customer experience, increase efficiencies in the relevant settlement cycles and offer segments of its core customer types the infrastructure and payment solutions necessitated by the particular needs of their business," he concluded.