C2B - Provision of Services Customer Registration Normalized (XML) SEPA

The creation of the SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area - Single Area Payments in euros) allowed the strengthening of European integration and the establishment of a single retail payment market. Currently, SEPA covers, in addition to EU Member States, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Norway, San Marino and Switzerland. In this space, economic agents can make and receive payments in euro, within countries and between countries, under the same conditions, rights and obligations.

In achieving this goal, SEPA offers pan-European payment instruments, such as credit transfers (SCT) and Direct Debits (SEPA DD), whose operation is based on standards, procedures and, as far as possible, common infrastructure to all participants .

The technical and business models are defined by the European Payments Council (EPC), in the rulebooks and the respective Implementation Guidelines (available in www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu). These models are based on the technical specifications of the ISO20022 standard and are designed to ensure an automated processing credit transfers and collections.

It is up to banks the responsibility to implement a Customer-to-Bank channel (C2B) compatible with SEPA, following standard messages for use of EPC recommendations of XML ISO20022 standard set out in the SEPA C2B Implementation Guidelines and offer its customers the layout file to use.

In this framework, to facilitate the connection between the client and the bank, the Portuguese banking community has developed a harmonized reporting format applicable to the SEPA Credit Transfer and SEPA Direct Debits to. This document describes this pattern, for use in customer relationship - Bank by the member institutions of the national banking community.

The use of a harmonized layout has clear benefits for C2B communication (especially for businesses and public administration bodies), is proposing to: (i) remedy the multitude of formats used by customers in their relationship with banks for initiation payment instructions; and (ii) provide companies and public administration bodies efficient and advantageous communication solution in terms of cost.

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