To contribute to a further integration of Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) payments in the European digital market, the European Payments Council (EPC) has facilitated in May 2018 the creation of an ad-hoc multi-stakeholder group on mobile initiated SEPA credit transfers, including SEPA Instant Credit transfers (SCT Inst) (MSG MSCT). This group developed a draft document on “MSCT Interoperability Implementation Guidelines” (MSCT IIGs - MSG MSCT 026-19v0.9). In order to help developing a successful MSCT ecosystem that brings added-value to all and to gather industry opinion and feedback regarding these guidelines, the draft document went through a public consultation from 23 May till 16 September 2019.

Following this public consultation, the MSG analysed the various comments received and prepared an updated version of the document which also included a title change to “Mobile Initiated SEPA (Instant) Credit Transfer Interoperability Guidance (MSCT IG).

This guidance document aims through the description of MSCT use cases to provide an insight into the main issues related to the initiation of (instant) SEPA credit transfers in different mobile payment contexts such as person-to-person, consumer-to-business (retail payments including both in-store and m-commerce payments) and business-to-business payments. Next to the MSCT transaction aspects such as payer authentication, transaction authentication, risk management and payer/beneficiary acknowledgements and notification messages it focuses on the technology and security used in the customer-to-payment service provider (PSP) space, since the SCT Inst and SCT transactions as such have already been specified in the respective rulebooks. It furthermore specifies various security guidelines for MSCTs (e.g. MSCT app, Consumer  Device User Verification Method (CDUVM), MSCT on-boarding, etc.). Finally, the document discusses the main interoperability issues and barriers detected for MSCTs.

By developing this interoperability guidance, the multi-stakeholder group aimed to contribute to a competitive MSCT market, by providing the different stakeholders with an insight into the different service, technical and security aspects involved. The document could serve as a reference basis for making certain implementation choices.

The MSG will now analyse in more detail the technical requirements amongst MSCT service providers to enable interoperability across SEPA.

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