All ISO 20022 standard-based XML payment messages specified under the four 2023 Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) payment scheme rulebooks will be based on the 2019 version of the ISO 20022 standard.
On 14 November 2023, the EPC published version 4.0 of the guidance document EPC087-22 for SEPA payment scheme participants and payment service users on how to prepare themselves for and to handle the change-over to the 2019 version of ISO 20022 by 17 March 2024.
This publication results from an EPC decision taken on 24 October 2023 to postpone the migration date to the 2019 version of the ISO 20022 standard, from 19 November 2023 (as initially agreed upon in September 2020) to 17 March 2024 because a successful ISO version migration on 19 November 2023 could not be guaranteed for at least two large SEPA countries. This decision also postponed the entry-into-force date of the 2023 SEPA payment scheme rulebooks to 17 March 2024.
The version 4.0 now refers to the new ISO version migration date of 17 March 2024.
The document determines the concrete impact of such ISO version migration on the various SEPA payment scheme processes for the SEPA payment scheme participants and payment service users concerned.
It also gives guidance to SEPA payment scheme participants and payment service users on how they can deal with the SEPA payment initiation, acceptance and processing aspects affected by the ISO version migration.
In the run-up to the entry into force date of the 2023 SEPA payment scheme rulebooks, this guidance document may be updated from time to time based on further clarification requests from payment service users and/or SEPA payment scheme participants.