In 2025, the European Payments Council (EPC) became aware that the SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) and SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) schemes were being used to process credit transfers for originators or beneficiary of the funds —transferred to or from a SEPA country— not holding a payment account with a SCT (Inst) scheme participant.
Such so-called one-leg out credit transfer transactions are not permitted under the SCT and SCT Inst schemes, which have been designed exclusively for end-to-end euro denominated credit transfers within SEPA, and are hence not suitable to process international credit transfers.
On 6 November 2025, the EPC sent the Letter EPC027-25 to all SCT and SCT Inst scheme participants. This letter is now publicly available on this page below. With this letter, the EPC aims to make all SCT and SCT Inst scheme participants aware about the risks related to such practices.
The data elements of SCT and SCT Inst payment messages do not match the information needs and regulatory compliance requirements entailed by international credit transfers, which exposes the PSPs concerned to potentially severe regulatory non-compliance risks. To harmonise the processing of international credit transfers for SEPA-based PSPs, the EPC has developed the One-Leg Out Instant Credit Transfer (OCT Inst) scheme, which aligns with relevant international standards for international payments, such as CBPR+.
The OCT Inst scheme supports all necessary message elements to provide full details about the payer, payee, and all financial institutions involved in the end-to-end international payment chain. With the OCT Inst scheme, SEPA-based PSPs can also meet the ambitious end 2027 targets of the G20 Roadmap for enhancing international payments, including lower cost, improved transparency, faster transaction processing, expanding payment system access and extending payment system operating hours. The EPC calls upon the SCT and SCT Inst scheme participants offering or intending to offer international credit transfer services, to join the OCT Inst scheme as soon as possible.
The EPC, as part of its duties of scheme manager, recommends SCT and SCT Inst scheme participants to inform immediately the EPC secretariat ([email protected]) whenever it has evidence of or observed one-leg out credit transfers presented via the SCT or SCT Inst scheme.