The new versions of the SEPA Credit Transfer and SEPA Direct Debit Scheme rulebooks are published

The European Payments Council published new versions of the SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT), SEPA Direct Debit (SDD) Core (SDD Core), and SDD Business to Business (SDD B2B) scheme rulebooks, which will take effect in November 2017. Scheme participants will as usual have one year to adapt their systems.

The EPC SEPA schemes are used by thousands of Payment Service Providers (PSPs) in Europe, and facilitate some 36 billion transactions per year. The EPC therefore invites all participating PSPs to take note of these new rulebook versions, and to make sure they will be ready in November 2017 to provide SEPA credit transfer and direct debit services that comply with the new versions of the rulebooks.

The main update, which will be included in the rulebooks for all three schemes, features the obligation for scheme participants to accept at least, but not exclusively, Customer-to-Bank (C2B) SEPA payment message files based on the EPC’s C2B SEPA scheme Implementation Guidelines (IGs).

Customers will still have the choice either to continue using their existing C2B payment message file set-up or to opt for the C2B payment message file based on EPC specifications. On the other hand, the scheme participants will have to be technically capable of supporting C2B payment message files based on the EPC specifications. This change results from a recommendation from the Euro Retail Payments Board.

It will benefit corporate customers which transact in various SEPA countries or with different PSP partners. It is a step towards greater harmonisation across the SEPA region.

Other changes to the rulebooks include, for the SCT scheme, inquiry procedures between the beneficiary bank and the originator bank as well as a concrete procedure for originator banks to handle a ‘request for recall by the originator’ for a reason other than duplicate sending, technical problems resulting in erroneous SCT(s) and a fraudulently originated SCT. Both changes will only become effective as of 18 November 2018.

Source: EPC