This payment scheme enables euro credit transfers with the funds made available on the account in less than ten seconds at any time and in an area that will progressively span over 36 European countries. All payment service providers ( ) are invited to adhere to the scheme as soon as possible. The technical information for implementing the scheme is available on this page.
The rulebook currently in effect up to 19 November 2023 03:00 CET is the 2021 rulebook version 1.2. The version 1.2 has no specific impact on the business and operational rules compared to the version 1.1 of the 2021 rulebook.
Read more about the 2021 SCT Inst rulebook version 1.2
The Implementation Guidelines of the version 1.2 of the 2021 rulebook are based on the relevant ISO 20022 XML message standards.
Read more about the 2021 SCT Inst scheme Customer-to-PSP IGs version 1.0
Read more about the 2021 SCT Inst scheme Inter-PSP IGs version 1.0
Do you want to use the ’s Intellectual Property Rights related to its payment schemes’ rulebooks and implementation guidelines for non-euro transactions? Click here for more information.
The 2023 rulebook version 1.1 enters into force on 19 November 2023 at 03:30 CET and is applicable up to 23 November 2025 08:00 CET.
This entry-into-force time will be preceded by a -wide 30 minutes downtime period from 03:00 CET up to 03:30 CET. During that downtime period, no single instruction, transaction, r-transaction, transaction investigation and any response message related to them will be possible.
Up to 03:00 CET, all payment messages will be in the 2009 version of the ISO 20022 standard. As of 03:30 CET, all payment messages will be in the 2019 version of that same standard.
Read more about the 2023 SCT Inst rulebook version 1.1
The Implementation Guidelines are based on the 2019 message version of the ISO 20022 standard.
Read more about the 2023 SCT Inst Customer-to-PSP IGs version 1.1
Read more about the 2023 SCT Inst Inter-PSP IGs version 1.1
The also published a separate guidance document about the migration to the 2019 message version of ISO 20022.
- To formally enable the
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’ (
) including an appropriate definition for this new term. The definitions of the terms ‘Originator’ and ’Beneficiary’ are amended whereby also payment service providers (
) 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
as well. Also, some obligations of the Originator
and of the Beneficiary
in the rulebook sections 5.7 and 5.8 are amended.
- Provision of the structured address of the payment service user:
As of 19 November 2023 at 08:00 CET, payment service users are allowed to send a structured address of the Originator and/or the Beneficiary in electronic Customer-to- files based on at least the Customer-to- Implementation Guidelines ( ). From that same date, also scheme participants are allowed to provide structured addresses in their Inter- payment messages and r-transactions.
In view of the above, all scheme participants must be able to support the delivery of structured addresses when payment service users and scheme participants want a structured address in their outgoing and incoming payments. scheme participants cannot reject payments only due to the inclusion of a structured address.
The use of an unstructured address will still be possible and supported by the scheme up to and including 23 November 2025 08:00 CET.
As of 23 November 2025 08:00 CET, the use of the structured address will become mandatory for Inter- payment messages where applicable, and for payment service users when they send electronic Customer-to- files based on at least the Customer-to- . From that moment, 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.
Important reminder: back in 2020, the already decided upon the following changes for the 2023 rulebook:
- Migrate all ISO 20022 standard-based XML payment messages used under the scheme, to the 2019 version of the ISO 20022 standard.
- Align the attribute numbering between the four payment scheme rulebooks as of the respective 2023 rulebooks.
Annex IV of the 2023 rulebook version 1.0 lists all changes since the version 1.0 of the 2021 rulebook.
Guidance on the migration to the 2019 version of the ISO 20022-based XML messaging standard
Guidance on the use of structured addresses under the SEPA payment schemes as of November 2025
Guidance to improve transparency for retail payment end-users
Guidance on reason codes for SEPA Instant Credit Transfer R-transactions
Clarification paper on SEPA Credit Transfer and SEPA Instant Credit Transfer rulebooks
Clarification Paper on the Use of Slashes in References, Identifications and Identifiers
SEPA requirements for an extended character set (UNICODE subset) - best practices
Yearly update of the Payment Threats and Fraud Trends Report