SEPA payment schemes’ ISO20022 migration postponed to March 2024

The European Payments Council (EPC) has, after careful consideration, postponed the SEPA Migration which originally was foreseen for the 19th November 2023 to Sunday 17th March 2024.

The changed date applies to all four SEPA schemes:

• SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT)
• SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst)
• SEPA Direct Debit Core (SDD Core)
• SDD Buisness-to-Business (SDD B2B)

Accordingly, the version currently in use will be maintained until then.

So what exactly is this ISO20022 Migration?

In a nutshell, it can be summed up that:

• ISO20022 is a global and open messaging standard for financial institutions set by the International Organization for Standardization, an independent, non-governmental standard-setting body. ISO20022 integrates a large amount of highly structured data.
• This standard has been globally adopted by the financial payments’ industry and payment messaging systems to address interoperability issues in the payment ecosystem, especially on an international scale.
• Currently, the use of different financial messaging standards across countries makes communication between the different stakeholders in the payment chain difficult. Despite significant improvements in payment processing, this can lead to inefficiencies and be a potential barrier to data automation capabilities.
• So, the financial industry’s payments and payment messaging systems is globally moving to the common ISO20022 standard between March 2023 and November 2025.
• Furthermore, enriched and structured data sets provide multiple benefits for all market participants including the improvement of the industry’s ability to detect and prevent financial crime, a faster processing, a greater openness and visibility among payment stakeholders and it supports the needs of a more digital economy.

Please check the ABBL website for up-to-date information on the respective message guidelines