European Payment Transactions Made Easier

The introduction of the Euro has greatly simplified cash flows within Europe. The European Commission and the European Central Bank are now planning to improve the entire EU payment transaction system by creating a Single European Payment Area (SEPA).

The European Commission has set as a target that, as of 2008, international payment transactions within the entire Euro zone should be as efficient and safe as they already are on a national level. In order to achieve this ambitious goal, banks and banking associations have joined forces to form the European Payments Council (EPC), with the aim of committing to a pan-European rollout of relevant eBanking products.

Since 2003, SIZ has been providing the DSGV (Deutscher Sparkassen- und Giroverband) with comprehensive support in the fields of payment transaction and card strategies. This work has included a wide range of tasks within the scope of the DSGV's introduction of SEPA. SIZ experts provide intensive support for the DSGV’s SEPA task forces "Product design and marketing", "Process description/Technical Implementation", and "Process unification and infrastructure".

Data formats for SEPA credit transfers and SEPA direct debits have been defined by the EPC. These are based on the international ISO 20022 standard UNIFI (Universal Financial Industry message scheme), a group (or "family") of messages used for processing banking transactions. The resulting data formats are XML-based. SEPA thus converts the German data exchange format DTAUS (with its fixed record length) into a format that complies with a European industry standard, and which is also based on the worldwide ISO UNIFI standard.

UNIFI, however, permits a large number of different configurations. For this reason, the EPC has defined restrictions for SEPA payment processes in order to apply the UNIFI standards efficiently. The "SEPA data format" thus precisely defines the EPC's restrictions on the bank/bank and customer/bank payment transaction messages as applied to the UNIFI standard.

The EPC has decided that this data format standard is to be mandatory for bank/bank data exchange all over Europe, but has so far only recommended the use of standards for the customer/bank interface. The EPC has also made XML conversion mandatory at the bank/bank interface, but has not made a specific recommendation with the regard to the customer/bank interface. This situation hampers the pan-European development of competition in the field of customer/bank transactions.

The German banking industry endorses the introduction of the SEPA processes, but will also continue to adhere to the proven multibank-capability for SEPA payments which is guaranteed by the current Customer RDT  ("DFÜ mit Kunden") agreement. For this reason, the ZKA provides its own XML conversion process for the customer/bank interface (see box).

The introduction of the SEPA standard presents employees of payment transaction and electronic banking businesses with a challenge. Well-known, proven data formats are now being replaced with the XML-based SEPA data format. As a result, the need for technical consulting and advanced SEPA training has increased among the employees of the savings bank finance group. In order to provide specific support in this area, SIZ has developed a special training scheme to cover the following areas: 

• An introduction to UNIFI
• An introduction to the SEPA data format
• Relevant XML essentials
• In-depth knowledge of the customer/bank message format

These trainings can be held at SIZ or, if required, at your own site. If you require further information regarding our training offering, please send an e-mail to info@siz.de, with "SEPA training" in the subject line.

The TRAVIC range of products profits from SIZ's acknowledged expertise. TRAVIC includes both bank-side and customer-side components covering all current online and electronic banking standards.

All TRAVIC products are compatible with the SEPA standard. The banking server product TRAVIC Corporate, for example, is able to verify and process SEPA orders; TRAVIC Link facilitates the fully automated exchange of SEPA files; and TRAVIC Web (the EBICS customer-side product) allows the registration and transmission of SEPA payment orders.