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November 2017 marked a major event in an increasingly instant world: the launch of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst), which enables credit transfers in ten seconds – or less – across the SEPA. Since its launch, the SCT Inst scheme has kept on growing, and the la

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to the European Payments Council. The Nordic Payments Council (NPC) developed the first Nordic payment schemes, based on and close to the European Payments Council’s (EPC) Single Euro Payments Area (SE

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to the European Payments Council. Did you know that bank cards are ubiquitous in Iceland and that local banks are all involved in projects to increase public awareness on the importance of financial li

As of 1 January 2021 the United Kingdom (UK) is set to leave the single market and customs union, either with an European Union (EU) - UK deal, negotiated during the transition period, or without it (i.e. "no-deal" Brexit). The UK will at that point maintain participation in the Single Euro payments

The European Payments Council (EPC) publishes today the updated version 1.2 of the 2019 SEPA payment rulebooks. The version 1.2 has no impact on the business and operational rules compared to the versions 1.0 and 1.1 of the 2019 rulebooks, or on any specification in the related implementation guidel

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to the European Payments Council. The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) initiative has been a key enabler for the integration of the retail payments market in the European Union (EU): the development of

*The views expressed in the below reports are solely those of the authors and should not be attributed to the European Payments Council. Explore more about the overall payment statistics, global market visions, artificial intelligence (AI) and more in a selection of recent and free reports that w

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to the European Payments Council. The European Central Bank’s (ECB) Governing Council, in line with the European Commission’s (EC) objectives, has taken an important move towards the full reach of inst

The EPC Scheme Management Board (SMB) – the body responsible for the administration and evolution of the EPC Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) payment schemes – is inviting interested parties to apply for a vacancy for an 'independent member', effective from 18 November 2020 to 28 April 2021, with th

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to the European Payments Council. We continue our series of European payment landscapes with a profile of Estonia. Estonia is a frontrunner for card payments, and its PSP community was among the first

In September 2020, the EPC decided to migrate all its SEPA payment schemes to the 2019 version of the ISO 20022 message standard by 19 November 2023 i.e. the entry-into-force date of the 2023 EPC SEPA payment scheme rulebooks. This implementation combined with possibly new/amended business and/or fu

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to the European Payments Council. In early July a group of major European banks announced the launch of the European Payments Initiative (EPI) with the aim of creating a unified payment solution for co

The Single Euro Payments Area Proxy Lookup (SPL) scheme covers the exchange of the data necessary to initiate payments between proxy-based mobile payment solutions on a pan-European level, aiming to facilitate interoperability between participating payment solutions. For those interested in

*The views expressed in the below reports are solely those of the authors and should not be attributed to the European Payments Council. During the second quarter of 2020, we gathered a list of recent and free reports that shine a spotlight on the future of payments, open banking and other intere

On 7 March 2019, the EPC published its decision paper on Brexit and United Kingdom’s (UK) payment service providers’ (PSPs) participation in the EPC SEPA payment schemes, approving UK Finance's application for the continued participation of UK PSPs in the EPC SEPA payment schemes, even in the event

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to the European Payments Council. After a few years in development, a new Confirmation of Payee (CoP) system was rolled out last month by UK banks. In short, the CoP enables consumers to see whether th

As of today, the maximum amount per SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) transaction went up from 15,000 to 100,000 euros. Payment end-users can use the SCT Inst scheme in higher-value business-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions. This new transaction limit means additional freed

On 2 June 2020, the EPC launched a three-month public consultation on the rulebook for the new SEPA Request-to-Pay (SRTP) scheme, which will provide a new way to request a payment initiation. We interviewed the ad-hoc RTP Task Force (RTP TF) chair Jean-Yves Jacquelin to shed some light on the future

The European Payments Council (EPC) launches today a 90-day public consultation on the draft rulebook it developed for its new SEPA Request-to-Pay (SRTP) scheme. The SRTP scheme, which is based on the RTP specifications document  produced by the RTP Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG RTP), covers

The ad-hoc multi-stakeholder group on Mobile Initiated SEPA (Instant) Credit Transfers, (MSG MSCT), which is facilitated by the European Payments Council (EPC) has conducted through a newly established dedicated work-stream, a more detailed analysis of the technical interoperability of MSCTs based o

Following the publication of the “Mobile Initiated Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) (Instant) Credit Transfer Interoperability Guidance” (MSCT IG) document, the ad-hoc multi-stakeholder group on MSCTs has conducted, through a newly established dedicated work-stream, a more detailed analysis on the t

November 2017 marked a major event in an increasingly instant world: the launch of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst), which enables credit transfers in ten seconds – or less – across the SEPA. Two and a half years on, the scheme has grown significantly, and the

The views expressed in the below reports are solely those of the authors and should not be attributed to the European Payments Council. During the first quarter of 2020, we gathered a list of recent and free reports that focus on artificial intelligence (AI), fraud and other interesting paym

European Central Bank’s (ECB) survey1 results show that cash was on average* dominant at the point-of-sale (POS) in the overall euro area in 2016, i.e. 78.8% of purchases were paid using cash. The EPC invited professionals working in the payments industry to share their views on how the future

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to the European Payments Council. In order to improve the efficiency of domestic payments, Hungarian banks launched a local currency Instant Payment System (AFR) based on the SEPA Instant Credit Transf

Today the European Payments Council (EPC) published the version 1.5 of the clarification paper on Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Credit Transfer (SCT) and SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) rulebooks. The paper applies to the current applicable 2019 SCT and SCT Inst rulebooks and provides gui

The EPC now counts among its members one additional organisation: •    PERSPECTEEV SAS (based in France) The EPC now represents 76 payment service providers and their associations. Two further organisations have the status of ‘associate member’.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to the European Payments Council. We close our series of interviews representing the views of various stakeholders on the implementation of the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) wit