SEPA Glossary
SEPA is a comprehensive development and is therefore accompanied with quite some terminologies. For your convenience, we have listed the most important terminologies and their explanation below. Please click on a term to find its meaning.
- AOS
- AOS stands for Additional Optional Services. These are services that banks can offer in addition to SEPA products. The EPC is allowing banks to offer Additional Optional Services to enhance their basic SEPA products.
- BIC
- BIC is an international standard. It stands for Bank Identifier Code. To facilitate straight through processing, all SEPA payments will require an International Bank Account Number (IBAN) and a BIC code.
- EACT
- The European Association of Corporate Treasurers (EACT) is a trade group representing 2500 companies.
- EPC
- The European banking industry created the European Payment Council (EPC) to develop and implement SEPA on a self regulatory basis. Banks are committed to delivering SEPA products and services based on EPC Rulebooks. ING is a founding member of EPC and is participating in many EPC working groups.
- IBAN
- The International Bank Account Number (IBAN) is an international standard for identifying bank accounts across national borders. To facilitate straight through processing, all SEPA payments will require an IBAN and a Bank Identifier Code (BIC).
- National migration plans
- SEPA products and processes will be introduced by the central banks and bankers’ associations in each euro country. They are responsible for creating national migration plans for their respective country. These national migration plans are key to the effective implementation of SEPA.
- PSD
- PSD stands for Payment Services Directive. This provides the legal framework on which SEPA products will be constructed. This framework has to be implemented in the national laws of each participating country.
- UNIFI XML
- The new SEPA instruments are based on Extended Mark-up Language (XML) standards. They provide a uniform method for describing and exchanging structured data thus enabling full interoperability between parties. XML will improve the efficiency of IT developments and end-to-end STP. XML will be required in the bank-to-bank environment and recommended in the bank to client environment for means of reporting.