Standards

Common technical standards are needed for processing SEPA payments. They are necessary to allow interaction and interoperability between IT systems and to ensure an automated processing of euro-denominated transactions between payment service providers. This is referred to as “straight-through processing” (STP). STP means that no manual intervention is needed.

To achieve this, financial intermediaries need to exchange all payment-related information according to certain rules, which follow a three-layer process:

• business requirements: payment messages need to contain all the necessary information ("data elements") that needs to be exchanged between banks when processing a payment. Such information includes the amount, account details and the names of the sender and receiver. The European Payments Council (EPC) has identified obligatory business requirements for the data contained in a payment message. They are available in the rulebooks.
• logical requirements: the EPC has translated the business requirements for payment messages into logical data elements.
• message standards: the logical data elements are structured into a message following the agreed standards.

The EPC has decided to use well-known international standards for the SEPA payment instruments. It has selected the ISO 20022 message standards developed by the International Organization for Standardization. The EPC has decided to make the UNIFI standards compulsory in the bank-to-bank domain. For the customer-to-bank domain, the EPC recommends them. In order to define the use of the ISO 20022 message standards, the EPC has developed a set of SEPA implementation guidelines for credit transfers and direct debits.

SEPA cards standardisation

According to the EPC, SEPA for cards will be achieved to the greatest extent possible through the use of open and free standards, available to all parties within the cards payment value chain. In cooperation with other stakeholders, the EPC is carrying out a card standardisation programme designed to remove any technical obstacles preventing a consistent customer experience throughout the SEPA cards market.

The SEPA Cards Standardisation Volume - Book of Requirements - version 4.0 download (December 2009), developed by the EPC, defines the functional and security requirements, including requirements for the evaluation and certification methodology and architecture, that are recommended by the EPC for adoption throughout the card payment value chain to ensure interoperability within SEPA.