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Email: [email protected]

Telephone: +353 21 4979817

SEPA Directive

The SEPA initiative by the European Union commenced in 2002 with the aim of allowing seamless transaction flow between banks within the Single Euro Payments Area comprising the 27 EU member states plus Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Monaco and Liechtenstein. This covers over 500 million citizens where over 85 billion payments are transacted annually. The use of agreed technical and procedural standards allows consumers transact debit, credit and card transactions within these 32 countries as easily as within their own country. This reduces costs to the end consumer and increases competition across national boundaries. SEPA covers

• SEPA Direct Debit Scheme
• SEPA Credit Transfer Scheme
• SEPA Cards Framework

The EU regulations required all 17 Euro countries to convert to the new direct debit standard by 1st February 2014. Non Euro countries were required to convert by 31 October 2016. By these dates all national payment systems must have been “switched off” and replaced by the SEPA standard.

All businesses and non-profit organisations in Ireland already generating the direct debits must now comply with this EU Directive. This means that

• You will need to obtain the customer’s BIC and IBAN instead of the NSC and Account Number.
• There is a new layout of the direct debit file – a XML file is now required instead of the old EFT format.
• You need to obtain and manage all direct debit mandate forms, including existing mandates which may be currently held by the debtor's branch.

Business Solutions have created three product offerings to help you and your business.

SEPA Direct Debits: This is a Direct Debit Management system which gives you full control over all aspects of your Direct Debit cash collection.

SEPA Direct Debits Integrated: This system also manages your direct debit generation, importing the transaction amounts from your accounts system.

SEPA Converter: This is a product that will sit in parallel of your own Direct Debit system, as we recognise that some customers have DD systems that are deeply integrated into their IT systems.

Further information on the SEPA initiative can be obtained on the Banking & Payments Federation Ireland Payment Services Organisation website www.bpfi.ie , the Ready For Sepa website www.readyforsepa.ie and on the European Payments Council website www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu

We recommend that you would talk to your own bank about considerations such as the timeframe in which direct debit files should be submitted and how you will be notified of unpaid debit transactions, as this will vary from one bank to the next.

Telephone : +353 21 4979817

Email : [email protected]