What is Request to Pay?

22/07/2025

The Request to Pay (RTP), or Request for Payment, is an instrument that allows citizens and companies to request timely payment from a third party digitally, in cases as diverse as if it is, for example, commercial customers, a tenant or even the friend who owes us money.

RTP works similarly to well-known direct debits. At the direct debit, who has to receive a payment (usually a company that provides a recurring service gas, electricity, water, subscriptions ...) launches the orders (here they are called direct debits), but as they are recurrent, previous mandates of the payer are necessary.

For example, if there were an incident in the collection of an insurance receipt, the insurance company could send from its entity an RTP or payment request to the customer, who would receive a notification with all the data of the transaction (amount, concept ...) and could finalize the payment directly from the app of its own entity.

Another case of usual use is the one that allows the payments of citizens and companies to the public administrations. The latter could make a payment request to those managed with the exact amount and with a deadline.

In short, in the case of the RTP it is the beneficiary (recipient of the money) who activates the payment transaction and makes a request to the payer. It receives it through its online banking or its banking app, with all the data that identify the requested payment and once reviewed, it can accept or reject it. If accepted, the payment transaction is executed.

The RTP mechanism is complementary to instant transfers, so that it can become a future channel to initiate payments in real time and the transaction would be executed instantaneously, being an operation available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Now, only a few entities are developing this solution, but it will be foreseeable that others will gradually be incorporated and offering this instrument to all users.

For more information, we suggest you consult the following link,Abre en ventana nueva where you can find technical details about this functionality.

“Disclaimer: Please note that this is a translation of the original in Spanish that has been obtained using eTranslation (the machine translation tool provided by the European Commission), with the intention of giving you a basic idea of the content in English until a human translation becomes available. The Banco de España accepts no liability whatsoever in connection with this translation.”