Faster rails, wider assets, tighter rules: The forces reshaping European payments compliance

Three regulatory forces are reshaping European payments simultaneously, and many compliance teams are having to respond to all of them at once. 

The first is faster rails: the EU Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) is making near real-time execution the default across the eurozone, changing both what firms monitor and how quickly they have to monitor it. The second is a wider asset perimeter, as stablecoins regulated under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) move into the mainstream and blur the boundary between traditional finance and crypto-native instruments. The third is a tighter baseline: the Single Rulebook removes the national discretion that payments firms have long used to calibrate their programs, and raises the floor for everyone touching EU payment flows.

Each force is manageable on its own. Arriving together, they reward firms that plan early and treat readiness as an operational question, not only a compliance one. 

In the second session of The Future of Compliance Europe, our Executive Director of Financial Crime Compliance Strategy, Iain Armstrong, was joined by Maja Andreevska-Blazhevska, Head of Financial Crime Compliance and MLRO at Finance Incorporated Limited, and Simon McFeely, Managing Partner at Finvisor Fintech Partners. Drawing on that discussion, this article sets out what each force demands and where payments firms should focus first.

Faster rails: Screening at the speed of instant payments

The IPR’s central demand is speed. A sending institution must execute an instant payment within seconds of receiving an instruction, which leaves little room for the batch processes and manual reviews many firms still rely on. ComplyAdvantage’s 2026 State of Financial Crime survey found that 61% of firms are already prioritizing real-time customer monitoring to manage the anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) risk that comes with faster payments. The most immediate change is to how sanctions screening works.

“Really, what the IPR says is: stop sanction screening your transactions, and instead rely on sanction screening your customer in real time.”

Simon McFeely, Managing Partner at Finvisor Fintech Partners 

That change carries operational weight. Firms need straight-through processing from the moment an order arrives to the point of monitoring, and the capacity to operate around the clock rather than only in office hours. It also reaches beyond the eurozone, because incoming instant payments from non-EU SEPA countries such as Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom still require sanctions screening. Real-time customer screening, therefore, has to be backed by tools that can clear potential hits in seconds rather than hold up the payment.

Speed reshapes fraud risk as well. Because the regulation limits a firm’s ability to stop a payment the customer has instructed, fraud controls have to move earlier in the journey and rely on systems fast enough to act in a window measured in seconds. This is work that can no longer be done by people alone.

A wider asset perimeter: When payments meet crypto

Stablecoins are moving from the edges of payments toward the mainstream, and MiCA sets the regulatory pathway. MiCA does not replace AML obligations; it sits alongside them. For a payments firm adding stablecoin or crypto capabilities, that means a second set of rules layered on top of existing ones, and a customer base that supervisors will often treat as higher risk.

“In the past it was follow the money. Now it is follow the asset. That is how we should build our systems.”

Maja Andreevska-Blazhevska, Head of Financial Crime Compliance and MLRO at Finance Incorporated Limited

The operational challenge is consolidation. A firm offering cards, multi-currency accounts, and crypto in one place can quickly end up running separate transaction monitoring systems and losing a single view of the customer. 

Building toward one consolidated view, rather than a patchwork of tools, is what lets a firm manage the combined risk and meet obligations such as the travel rule across both worlds. It also raises a workforce question, as teams built around payments compliance need to broaden their skills and tooling to cover crypto-native risk.

A tighter baseline: From national discretion to a single floor

The Single Rulebook is the connective force. By removing national discretion, it raises standards for every firm touching EU payment flows and leaves far less room for the fragmented, locally calibrated approaches of the past.

The first gaps tend to appear where national regimes diverged from the new baseline, whether they were historically lighter or stricter than the regulation. Customer due diligence and risk scoring are early candidates, as is transaction monitoring, as cross-border typologies come into scope. Governance is another: the new regime expects a genuinely independent second line of defense and active board oversight, not arrangements that exist mainly on paper.

“The compliance environment is becoming faster, broader, and less forgiving of the fragmented approaches that came before.”

Iain Armstrong, Executive Director of Financial Crime Compliance Strategy at ComplyAdvantage

The practical response starts with understanding what actually applies. Not every article lands on every firm, so teams should map the obligations relevant to their model, brief boards and product leaders early, and begin planning changes to onboarding and back-end systems well ahead of the deadlines. That case is easier to make when compliance spend is tied to operational efficiency and growth rather than treated as a standalone cost. A platform built once, rather than patched repeatedly, can streamline onboarding and payment execution alongside the regulatory work, and the most durable approach pairs automation with human oversight rather than handing decisions to a model alone.