Out of the 2022 Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) payment scheme rulebook change management cycle, the European Payments Council (EPC) approved the change request to exclusively use the structured address of the payment service user as of November 2025. This change affects all four SEPA payment scheme rulebooks.
On 14 November 2023, the EPC published version 1.1 of the guidance document EPC 153-22 for scheme participants and payment service users on how to prepare themselves for the exclusive use of structured addresses as of 23 November 2025 being the entry-into-force date of the 2025 SEPA payment scheme rulebooks.
The publication of version 1.1 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 1.1 now refers to the new ISO version migration date of 17 March 2024.
The document determines the concrete impact of the exclusive use of structured addresses as of 23 November 2025 on the various SEPA payment scheme processes for the payment service users and the SEPA payment scheme participants concerned. It also gives them guidance on how they can deal with the SEPA payment initiation, acceptance and processing aspects affected by the change-over to structured addresses.
The EPC will monitor the preparations for the exclusive use of structured addresses up to 23 November 2025. This guidance document may be further updated based on further clarification needs from SEPA payment scheme participants and payment service users.