SEPA Credit Transfer

SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT)

EU Regulation defines mandatory deadlines for migration to SEPA

In February 2012, the European legislator adopted the 'Regulation (EU) No 260/2012 establishing technical and business requirements for credit transfers and direct debits in euro and amending Regulation (EC) No 924/2009' (the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Regulation), which defines 1 February 2014 as the deadline in the euro area for compliance with the core provisions of this Regulation. In non-euro countries, the deadline will be 31 October 2016.  Effectively, this means that as of these dates, existing national euro credit transfer and direct debit schemes will be replaced by SCT and SEPA Direct Debit (SDD). For more information on the SEPA Regulation, refer to these dedicated pages on the EPC Website:SEPA Legal and Regulatory Framework and The EPC Migration Tool Kit: Get Ready for SEPA by 1.2.2014. Act Now!.

The SCT Scheme in a nutshell

The SCT Scheme enables payment service providers (PSPs) to offer a core and basic credit transfer service throughout SEPA for either single or bulk payments. The scheme's standards facilitate payment initiation, processing and reconciliation, based on straight-through-processing (STP). The scope is limited to payments made in euro, within the 32 SEPA countries. The PSPs executing the credit transfer must formally participate in the SCT Scheme. There is no cap on the amount of funds that can be transferred under the scheme.