Italy

Italy adopted the pan-European SCT Inst scheme at an early stage, in November 2017. Despite the head start and wide participation from banks and payment service providers (292 participants as of November 2023), the growth in adoption and use of instant payments has been slow due to the high preference for cash. While instant payments account for just a 1.2% share of total payment volume transactions in 2023, paper-based transactions held a 66.7% share. The lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and regulatory intervention on cash usage are beginning to take effect, however, and the share of cash is expected to decline to 57.4% by 2028 — but based on current projections, this will mostly be to the benefit of card-based payments.