In this interview, Alberto Molpeceres and Fernando Cabello-Astolfi, founders of Devengo, share how their API-first, regulated payment institution is advancing instant account-to-account (A2A) payments across Europe. They discuss the opportunities created by real-time infrastructure, evolving regulation, and Devengo’s ambition to help shape the future of SEPA schemes through membership in the European Payments Council (EPC).

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to the EPC.

To begin, could you elaborate on Devengo and what makes it special?

Devengo is a Bank of Spain-regulated payment institution specialising in instant account-to-account transfers. We turn bank transfers and account verifications into automated, real-time flows for businesses across Spain and the SEPA zone, with a direct technical connection to Iberpay, the Spanish clearing house.

Three things set us apart:

• Regulation: direct supervision by the Bank of Spain is both a credibility marker and a serious barrier to entry.
  
• Proprietary technology: an API-first platform built from scratch, with no dependency on legacy banking rails.
  
• And the team: decades of payments experience combining regulatory depth with fintech execution at scale - a combination that is genuinely hard to replicate.

The clearest proof point is the EPC's One-leg Out Credit Transfer (OCT Inst) scheme: Only three PSPs in Europe are certified to move it in both directions. Devengo is one of them. The other two are global banks.

What are the perceived strategic challenges and opportunities in the payments market, and how do you see the evolution of A2A payments across Europe?

The biggest opportunity is structural. The Instant Payments Regulation has made instant the new default. Verification of Payee (VoP) is standardising fraud prevention at the scheme level. PSD3 is expanding the regulatory space for new players, opening up areas like central bank settlement access and the evolving nature of money towards a tokenised future. Together, these create real pressure on incumbents running on legacy rails - and a clear opening for infrastructure-native players.

For A2A specifically, the next five years are decisive. Cards still dominate certain flows by inertia, but instant A2A is now genuinely competitive on both economics and user experience - particularly for payouts, refunds, recurring payments, marketplaces, and high-value B2B flows. Instant collections and e-invoicing will follow as adoption matures.

The challenge is fragmentation: 27 SEPA Euro countries, multiple schemes, uneven adoption. The opportunity is the same challenge reframed - whoever solves that complexity at the API layer becomes critical European payments infrastructure. We expect A2A to shift from being "an alternative" to becoming the default rail for a growing share of business payments across Europe.

We expect A2A to shift from being "an alternative" to becoming the default rail for a growing share of business payments across Europe.

What were the key motivations behind Devengo's decision to join the EPC? 

The EPC is where the rulebooks governing European payments - SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) Inst, VoP, OCT Inst, SEPA Request-to-Pay (SRTP) -  are written and maintained. As a regulated PSP building infrastructure for instant payments across SEPA, we wanted a seat at that table: not just to follow the standards but to help shape them.

Membership serves three concrete purposes:

1. First, early visibility into scheme evolution, which lets us build for the future of European payments rather than just the present.
   
2. Second, positioning Devengo alongside the banks, PSPs, and infrastructure providers driving the conversation - credibility that matters to our clients and partners.
   
3. Third, it reinforces our identity as a serious, regulated infrastructure player committed to the long-term health of European payments. Contributing to the EPC is part of the same mission as building the product.

As a regulated PSP building infrastructure for instant payments across SEPA, we wanted a seat at that table: not just to follow the standards but to help shape them.

What are the ongoing and future EPC activities to which Devengo expects to contribute more?

VoP is the most immediate priority. Now that the scheme is live across SEPA, the focus shifts to interoperability, rulebook refinements, and operational best practices. We have hands-on experience implementing VoP at scale, and we want that experience to feed back into how the scheme evolves - particularly around edge cases and cross-border execution.

On SCT Inst and OCT Inst, our focus is on anything that improves the developer-facing aspects of the schemes: clearer exception handling, better tooling for reconciliation, and reducing the integration burden for businesses building on top of instant payments infrastructure.

Looking ahead, what major developments, regulatory changes or technological challenges do you believe will most impact payments players like Devengo in the near to medium term?

Three forces will define the next few years:

1. Regulation: the Instant Payments Regulation settling fully by 2027, PSD3 redrawing authentication and liability frameworks, FIDA opening up financial data-sharing, and the digital euro moving from design to early deployment.
   
2. Technology: payments increasingly triggered by agents, machines, and automated workflows rather than by humans; and money tokenisation enabling near-atomic settlement and liquidity optimisation at a scale that has not been operationally possible before.
   
3. Expectations: once instant is universal, programmable and real-time infrastructure stops being a differentiator and becomes the baseline. The businesses that will win are those that build for that baseline today.