EPC News

EPC Blog Series (Parts I-V): Get Ready for SEPA by February 2014. Early Movers on the Customer Side Share Lessons Learnt. 10-05-2012

This series of EPC Blogs (see links below) highlights best practice identified by bank customers who have successfully completed migration to the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). The series reflects the experience of early movers on the demand side who have shared their lessons learnt in the EPC Newsletter and in the EPC Video 'SEPA for Billers' (see links below).

• Part I emphasizes that project managers, who have already concluded the migration exercise, unanimously recommend that organisations which still have to adapt systems and operations to the SEPA schemes become active immediately.
• Part II focuses on the transition to the International Bank Account Number (IBAN) and the Business Identifier Code (BIC).
• Part III explores how to determine the appropriate strategy to achieve SEPA compliance of IT systems.

• Part IV details the benefits resulting from implementation of the ISO 20022 message standards.

• Part V analyses the impact of the European Union 'Regulation (EU) No 260/2012 establishing technical and business requirements for credit transfers and direct debits in euro' (the SEPA Regulation) on payment service users.

The SEPA Regulation defines 1 February 2014 as the deadline in the euro area for compliance with the core provisions of this Regulation. Effectively, this means that as of this date, existing national euro credit transfer and direct debit schemes will be replaced by SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) and SEPA Direct Debit (SDD).