The multi-stakeholder group on Mobile Initiated (instant) SEPA Credit Transfers (MSG MSCT), which is facilitated by the European Payments Council (EPC), held its 28th Plenary meeting on 13 December 2021.

Following the publication of the document on the Standardisation and governance of QR1-codes for Instant Payments at the Point of Interaction (IPs at the POI) (based on ERPB/2020/026), the MSG MSCT started the development of a document on the Standardisation of QR-codes for MSCTs in the dedicated work-stream. This new document aims to standardise a payee and a payer-presented QR-code for all types of MSCTs, i.e. all payment contexts (person-to-person (P2P), consumer-to-business (C2B), and business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C)) while addressing both SCT instant and SCT payments. Furthermore, the answers received under the European Banking Authority (EBA) Q&A 2020_5476 and 2020_5477 will be taken into account and a reference to the newly posted question by the MSG MSCT in November 2021, namely EBA Q&A 2021_6298 – Clarification on the EBA answer to EBA Q&A 2020_5476 will be included. Note that the development of these new documents addresses also the Recommendations A contained in the Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB) Statement published in November 2021 (ERPB/2021/ 028).

The various work-streams also progressed on the processing of the comments received through the public consultation on the MSCT Interoperability Guidance (EPC269-19) and the preparation of a Disposition of comments (MSG MSCT 123-21), on which a status report was provided during the Plenary meeting.

Furthermore, the Plenary reviewed the recently received answers from the EBA under the EBA Q&A 2020_5570 and 2020_5573 which will be taken into account in the current work.

According to their mandate extension (MSG MSCT 128-21) and following the MSCT roadmap (MSG MSCT 089-20v2.0), the MSG MSCT also decided to start the work on further analysis and standardisation of MSCTs based on other proximity technologies. Note that the EPC was also invited to conduct further work on the standardisation of MSCTs based on Near Field Communication (NFC) or Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) in the ERPB Statement ERPB/2021/028 published in November 2021.

The first focus of the MSG MSCT will be on NFC, followed by BLE. The Plenary agreed to launch a call for nominations within the MSG MSCT and an open call on the EPC website in December 2021 for the establishment of a new dedicated work-stream in January 2022 for this purpose. The first meeting of this work-stream was scheduled on 28 January 2022.

[1] Quick-Response

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