CICLOM Platform

About CICLOM

Designed and developed by Iberpay, CICLOM is one of the most advanced and continuosly evolving technological payment platforms, which provides innovative solutions with its real-time payment processing technology and 24x7 processing regime.

CICLOM is a pan-European payments infrastructure that has a technical and communications architecture with high processing capacity, maximum availability, scalability and security. CICLOM also facilitates tge connection of the participating entities in Iberpay's payment system with the rest of the SEPA area, through its interoperability links, guaranteeing accesibility to practically all European banks.

It is an interbank infrastructure that processes very significant volumes of payments, growing year after year. Specifically, in 2023 the platform processed a total of 3 billion payment transactions, for a total value of 2.7 trillion euros. The daily average was 12 million transactions, with a maximum processed of 27.9 million operations and no notable incidents.

Security and Business Continuity

Guaranteeing the security of the transactions processed, the continuity and availability of the services and the technical infrastructure managed by the company has at all times been the highest priority for Iberpay.

Iberpay has a Cybersecurity Governance and Management Framework aligned with the Eurosystem's cyber-resilience strategy for Financial Market Infrastructures (FMIs) and with the CPMI-IOSCO cyber-resilience guide of the Basel International Payments Bank.

CICLOM's technical features

CICLOM platform is designed and developed entirely by Iberpay for the real-time processing of transactions and for the online management of information, and is, together with its communications network with the entities and its European connections, a critical infrastructure with high processing capacity and maximum availability, scalability and cyber resilience.

In addition to its functional features, it provides the following technical characteristics:

• Two active-active processing centres, operating simultaneously, with redundant fault-tolerant architecture, dynamic processing-load sharing and automatic reciprocal backup.
• High-capacity, scalable multiprocessing engine that provides flexibility and speed to adapt to the needs of transactional traffic.
• High-capacity networks and dedicated accesses with entities and their connections with other European processors, as well as with the Eurosystem’s T2 and TIPS platforms of the Eurosystem (SWIFT and EBICS).
• As mentioned above, information systems that allow entities to monitor their interbank payment activity and their risk positions in real-time, available through a browser and through real-time, secure and standardized APIs.

Finally, it should be noted that equipment is renewed periodically and recurrently, and the technical development and exploitation infrastructures are updated with the latest technologies, with the aim of improving and optimizing the processing capabilities and resilience of the system.

Processing capacity

For instant credit transfers processing, CICLOM platform offers a single technical and operational interface, both for domestic and European cross-border traffic. By using the same connection already established with CICLOM, entities avoid further technical complexities or the use of different networks or protocols.

To guarantee the service under any scenario, at all times and in the event of any unexpected peak level,  CICLOM has been certified with a processing capacity much higher than its current traffic, being the daily average of 2 million instant credit transfers, with the peak day reaching over 3.4 million. Likewise, at peak times, more than 3,500 instant credit transfers are processed per minute.

Processing times

The CICLOM platform offers the best and continually improving end-to-end interbank processing times. In continuous enhancement, processing instant credit transfers in approximately 0.6 seconds. Of this total process time, CICLOM platform only consumes 0.02 seconds, the rest of the time being invested by intermediate communication processes and by the entities.

Iberpay’s instant credit transfer processing and settlement service is neutral with regards to the channels and the payment services originating the instant credit transfers. CICLOM processes all types of instant credit transfers initiated from any of the value-added services that the entities offer to their clients. (Bizum, online banking, mobile banking app, business services, etc.)