SEPA Credit Transfer rulebook and implementation guidelines

The SCT rulebook currently in effect up to and including 16 March 2024 is the 2021 SCT rulebook version 1.3. Version 1.3 has no specific impact on the business and operational rules compared to versions 1.1 and 1.2 of the 2021 SCT rulebook.

Read more about the 2021 SCT rulebook version 1.3

The Implementation Guidelines of the 2021 SCT rulebook are based on the relevant ISO 20022 XML message standards.

Read more about the 2021 SCT scheme Customer-to-PSP IGs version 1.0 

Read more about the 2021 SCT scheme Inter-PSP IGs version 1.0

Do you want to use the EPC’s Intellectual Property Rights related to its SEPA payment schemes’ rulebooks and implementation guidelines for non-euro transactions? Click here for more information.

• To formally enable the SCT scheme to cater for both retail and Financial Institution-to-Financial Institution payment use cases, the term ‘Customer’ is replaced by the term ‘Payment Service User’ (PSU) including an appropriate definition for this new term. The definitions of the terms ‘Originator’ and ’Beneficiary’ are amended whereby also payment service providers (PSPs) can take up these roles. Related to this, the definition of the term ‘Payment Account’ is changed indicating that such account can be held by a PSP as well. Also, some obligations of the Originator PSP and of the Beneficiary PSP in the rulebook sections 5.7 and 5.8 are amended.
• Provision of the structured address of the payment service user:
  
  As of 17 March 2024, payment service users are allowed to send a structured address of the Originator and/or the Beneficiary in electronic Customer-to-PSP files based on at least the EPC SCT Customer-to-PSP Implementation Guidelines (IGs). From that same date, also SCT scheme participants are allowed to provide structured addresses in their Inter-PSP SCT payment messages and r-transactions.
  
  In view of the above, all SCT scheme participants must be able to support the delivery of structured addresses when payment service users and SCT scheme participants want a structured address in their outgoing and incoming SCT payments. SCT scheme participants cannot reject SCT payments only due to the inclusion of a structured address.
  
  The use of an unstructured address will still be possible and supported by the SCT scheme up to and including 22 November 2025.
  
  As of 23 November 2025, the use of the structured address will become mandatory for Inter-PSP SCT payment messages where applicable, and for payment service users when they send electronic Customer-to-PSP files based on at least the EPC SCT Customer-to-PSP IGs. From that date, the use of an unstructured address will no longer be allowed and will hence lead to rejects.
   
• Extra clarifications about the charging principles.
   
• Inclusion of the Proxy/Alias of the payment account of the Originator and/or of the payment account of the Beneficiary as an optional attribute in certain datasets. This attribute is an element supplied by the Originator and cannot substitute the IBAN as unique identifier for a payment account.
   
• Amendments to the SCT inquiry procedure and datasets which formalise clarifications already published by the EPC in the year 2021. 

Important reminder: back in 2020, the EPC already decided upon the following changes for the 2023 SCT rulebook: 

• Migrate all ISO 20022 standard-based XML payment messages used under the SCT scheme, to the 2019 version of the ISO 20022 standard. This migration now takes place on 17 March 2024 instead of 19 November 2023. More information about the change of this migration date can be found in the EPC news item published on 24 October 2023.
• Align the attribute numbering between the four SEPA payment scheme rulebooks as of the respective 2023 rulebooks.

Annex IV of the 2023 SCT rulebook version 1.1 lists all changes since the version 1.0 of the 2021 SCT rulebook.