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Schemes, rules, standards, processes, products and services need to be adapted in order to realise SEPA. To contribute to this process in specific areas, the Eurosystem has defined criteria and Terms of Reference for compliance with SEPA.
The Eurosystem has defined Terms of Reference for the SEPA compliance of card schemes. These Terms of Reference are based on the criteria contained in the SEPA Cards Framework (developed by the European Payments Council) and the criteria included in The Eurosystem’s view of a “SEPA for Cards” of November 2006.
To achieve the desired transparency, the Eurosystem expects card schemes aiming for SEPA compliance to conduct self-assessments and to publish the findings on their websites.
The following card schemes have published self-assessments on their website and have made them available to the relevant central bank:
Activa (SI), American Express, Bancomat / PagoBancomat (IT), Cartes Bancaires (FR), Euro 6000 (ES), Girocard (DE), LaserCard (IE), MasterCard, Multibanco (PT), PIN (NL), Servired (ES), Sistema 4B (ES) and Visa.
Other card schemes that intend to become SEPA-compliant are invited to conduct and publish their self-assessments. Moreover, self-assessments that have already been published should be updated when necessary.
Based on these self-assessments and on other feedback received, the Eurosystem will review the SEPA compliance criteria and the Terms of Reference. It will take into account the changes to the EPC’s SEPA Cards Framework (December 2009) and other relevant developments in the card schemes market.
Infrastructure providers compete offering their processing, clearing and settlement services to banks and other financial intermediaries. Prior to SEPA, the infrastructures and also their markets were organised differently in each country. This made cross-border processing complex and costly.
The European Payments Council (EPC) has defined a framework for clearing and settlement infrastructures (PE-ACH/CSM Framework). It outlines the principles that infrastructure providers must comply with to ensure that they can process SEPA credit transfers and direct debits.
The aim of the framework is to:
In the past, the schemes (rules and standards) for national payments were often developed by infrastructure providers. The payment products offered by banks would then be based on these schemes. With this set-up, infrastructure providers could easily clear and settle payments since they were based on their own individual schemes. But the schemes usually worked only in one country. It also meant that banks had to use a certain infrastructure and certain schemes. With SEPA, common schemes apply to all euro payments. Infrastructure providers adapt their systems in order to be able to process them. This enables infrastructure providers to offer their services to all payment service providers in SEPA. They, on the other hand, can choose any infrastructure provider. This will ultimately integrate the individual national markets that clear and settle euro retail payments into one European-wide market. This integration will increase business opportunities and competition for both payment service and infrastructure providers.
In its Fifth Progress Report on SEPA (July 2007, download [1.2 MB]), the Eurosystem specified four criteria that, in its view, the clearing and settlement industry (infrastructure providers) should fulfil in order to be considered SEPA-compliant. These four criteria are:
The Eurosystem expects infrastructure providers that aim to comply with the SEPA criteria to conduct and publish self-assessments. These providers can obtain guidance on self-assessments from a set of questions on each criterion drawn up by the Eurosystem.
Terms of Reference for the SEPA compliance of infrastructures (April 2008)
The Terms of Reference relate directly to the four criteria. To be SEPA-compliant in accordance with these criteria, an infrastructure would need to answer “yes” to all of the applicable numbered questions. As some infrastructures may not yet be SEPA-compliant, the sub-questions are intended to make the market more transparent during the migration phase.
