SEPA Credit Transfer

Section 2.3 of the SCT Rulebook states:

The scheme recognises that individual scheme participants and communities of participants will provide complementary services based on the scheme so as to meet further specific customer expectations. These are described as Additional Optional Services (AOS). Scheme participants are payment service providers that have formally adhered to the SEPA Scheme(s).The following two types of AOS are identified:

• AOS provided by banks to their customers as value-added services, which are nevertheless based on the core payment schemes. These AOS are purely a matter for banks and their customers in the competitive space.
• AOS provided by local, national and pan-European communities of banks, such as the use of additional data elements in the ISO 20022 XML standards. Any community usage rules for the use of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) core mandatory subset of the ISO 20022 XML standards should also be mentioned in this context, although they are not per se AOS. Other AOS may be defined, for example, relating to community provided delivery channels for customers.

Participants may only offer AOS in accordance with the following principles:

• All AOS must not compromise interoperability of the scheme nor create barriers to competition. The Scheme Management Committee (SMC) should deal with any complaints or issues concerning these requirements brought to its attention in relation to compliance with the rulebook as part of its normal procedures, as set out in the Internal Rules.
• AOS are part of the market space and should be established and evolve based on market needs. Based on these market needs, the European Payments Council (EPC) may incorporate commonly used AOS features into the scheme through the change management processes set out in the Internal Rules.
• There should be transparency in relation to community AOS. In particular, details of community AOS relating to the use of data elements present in the ISO 20022 XML payment standards (including any community usage rules for the SEPA core mandatory subset) should be disclosed on a publicly available website (in both local language(s) and English).

These AOS are not further described in the rulebook as they are to be generally considered as competitive offerings provided by both individual participants and communities of participants and are therefore out of scope.

The following operational SCT AOS have been advised to the EPC. For each AOS a link is provided to the website where the specification of the AOS is publicly available for download.