A broad range of payment stakeholders are involved in developing the schemes to ensure they keep meeting market needs and technological evolutions.
The offers four payment schemes that make paying across as easy and convenient as it is in one’s home country.
The SEPA Credit Transfer scheme
Schemes used by thousands of payment service providers
The payment schemes are used by over 4,000 payment service providers ( ) in Europe.
Each year, they contribute towards facilitating:
- In total, over 40 billion euro transactions in .
- Including more than 20 billion credit transfers.
- And over 20 billion direct debits.
Evolution of the schemes
The updates the schemes every two years to reflect market needs and evolutions in technical standards. This evolution is guided through a transparent change-management process that is open to all stakeholders.
payment scheme evolution calendar
The scheme evolution process always follows the same path: first, all stakeholders are invited to submit requests for change to the based on the latest rulebooks published. All the change requests received are then subject to a three-month public consultation to ensure they are broadly supported by the payment community. Updated rulebooks, including changes that are technically and legally feasible, are published afterwards.
The first step of the scheme evolution process organised by the ended on 31 December 2019 with the receipt of several 2020 change requests.
The second step being the three-month public consultation ran from 12 March to 9 June 2020. The is now reviewing the collected comments from this consultation. It will consult the stakeholder forums on the outcome of this public consultation and take a decision on each submitted change request in the third quarter of 2020.
The third step consists of the formal preparation and publication of the next version of the payment scheme rulebooks and the related implementation guidelines. This step ends in November 2020.
If you are interested in participating in the evolution of the schemes, links are provided below to each scheme’s public consultation page, where further information is available:
The first step of the scheme evolution process organised by the ended on 31 December 2019. The second step ran from 12 March to 9 June 2020.
The calendar below shows the timeline of the current scheme evolution process. All four schemes ( Credit Transfer, Instant Credit Transfer, Direct Debit ( ) Core and Business to Business) follow the same calendar.
- Until 31 December 2019
Call for change requests - Between 12 March and 9 June 2020
Three-month public consultation - November 2020
Publication of the next rulebook (entering into effect one year later)