Today, the European Payments Council (EPC) has published version 1.1 of the 2023 EPC SEPA Instant Credit Transfer rulebook and related document on the SCT Inst maximum amount. This rulebook version replaces with immediate effect version 1.0 of the 2023 SCT Inst rulebook published in May 2022. It highlights the new entry-into-force time of the rulebook and the preceding SEPA-wide downtime period.

The first change compared to version 1.0 is the amended entry-into-force time of the 2023 SCT Inst rulebook which is now set at 03:30 CET on 19 November 2023. The second change is a SEPA-wide 30 minutes downtime period for the SCT Inst scheme from 03:00 CET up to 03:30 CET. During that downtime period, no single SCT Inst instruction, transaction, r-transaction, transaction investigation and any response message related to them will be possible across SEPA.

The EPC decided upon these changes to help all SCT Inst scheme participants and their SCT Inst service-supporting technical partner(s) to make a smooth change-over of their relevant SCT Inst systems, infrastructures and applications from the 2009 version to the 2019 version of the ISO 20022 standard on 19 November 2023.
Up to 03:00 CET, all SCT Inst payment messages will be in the 2009 version of the ISO 20022 standard. As of 03:30 CET, all SCT Inst payment messages will be in the 2019 version of that same standard.

Related to this decision, the EPC has also published version 2.0 of the guidance document on the migration to the 2019 version of the ISO 20022-based XML messaging standard. The document determines the concrete impact of the ISO version migration on the various SEPA payment scheme processes for the SEPA payment scheme participants and payment service users concerned. This version now outlines the new entry-into-force time of the 2023 SCT Inst rulebook, the related preceding SEPA-wide downtime period and the explicit guidance to all SCT Inst scheme participants to duly inform and well in advance their customers about the SEPA-wide downtime.