European Payments Council documents

SEPA Credit Transfer and the reason code for non-acceptance by the Beneficiary Bank

After 2 years of SCT processing in the SEPA Credit Transfer world, the EPC has been informed that in the case of returns and rejects, there is a trend that the real reason code for returning a Credit Transfer is not given by the Beneficiary Bank.

In most of the cases the standard code „Reason not specified” is used as a default value for all returns and rejects.

In order to halt this trend, it is strongly recommended that the codes used by all participants should be in line with the real reason of the R-message as per the SCT Rulebook rules.

The SCT Rulebook defines a “Return” as a credit transfer which is diverted from normal execution after interbank settlement, and is sent by the Beneficiary Bank back to the Originator Bank for a credit transfer that cannot be executed for valid reasons such as wrong account number or account closed, with the consequence that the beneficiary account cannot be credited on the basis of the information contained in the original credit transfer message.

The SCT Rulebook defines a ‘Reject’ as a credit transfer which has not been accepted for normal execution before interbank settlement.

The Codes of R-Messages have been defined for such cases to allow the Originator Bank to clear the issue (eventually also with the originator of the SCT) and correct the original data of the transfer, to avoid sending again the same transfer with the same error, generating the next return.

EPC encourage all SCT participants that are not using the defined codes to implement the appropriate actions in order to be in line with the SCT Rulebook quoting the real reason code when instructing any R-Messages.

More details:

http://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/knowledge_bank_detail.cfm?documents_id=363