SEPA Operational Framework

Regulatory framework

The Directive 2007/64/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on payment services in the internal market,“ the transposition of which into national legislations is expected to be effected by 1st November 2009” , establishes a harmonised legal framework for payment services at Community level. The Regulation (EC) No 2560/2001 on cross-border payments in euro which defines that the fees charged on domestic and cross-border payments up to €50.000 shoud be the same.

Standards

SEPA requires the use of common pan-european standards and business practices for the fully automated and efficient processing of payment instruments. Indicatively, the following standards shall be used in SEPA payments:

The International Bank Account Number (IBAN) which is used to define the bank and the account number of a beneficiary. In SEPA, the use of IBAN is a prerequisite for the automated processing of payment orders. More information on IBAN can be found at the website of Hellenic Bank Association (in Greek).

Bank Identifier Code (BIC) is the unique identification code of a specific bank and/or bank branch, registered by the provider of electronic messaging services SWIFT.

Terms of reference and compliance of infrastructures

Infrastructures play an important role in achieving the objectives of SEPA. In its 5th progress report the Eurosystem defined four criteria that infrastructures should fulfill in order to be compliant with the needs of SEPA. The criteria refer to processing capabilities, interoperability between the banks and the infrastructures, as well as between the infrastructures themselves, reachability, i.e. sending and receiving capacity, and free choice of infrastructures by banks, based on the lack of access restrictions and transparency on the services provided and pricing. In April 2008, the Eurosystem published the Terms of reference for the SEPA-compliance of infrastructures which complement the above criteria and infrastructures have been invited to use them as guidance for self-assessment. Using common terms of reference will make the self-assessments, which should be made public, comparable for interested market players.