GLOBAL PAYMENTS KNOWLEDGEISO 20022 / SWIFT / SEPA / MT / MX

Topic archive

SEPA

Plain-language learning briefs that route you to the key ideas, operational questions, and practical context for this part of the payment ecosystem.

21briefs indexed

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All SEPA briefs

SEPA Payments Schemes

Defines the difference between a payment scheme and a processing system before introducing SEPA's four principal rule sets.

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SEPA stakeholders

Organizes the major European institutions, industry bodies, and operational participants that govern and deliver SEPA.

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Introduction to SEPA

Explains SEPA's purpose, euro-only scope, geographic boundaries, and goal of making cross-border euro transfers resemble domestic payments.

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ACK, NACK, and the Payment Status Report (pacs.002)

An ACK (acknowledgement) confirms a message was accepted and a NACK (negative acknowledgement) reports it was rejected, while the pacs.002 payment status report tells the sender whether the payment itself was accepted, rejected, or is still pending, with reason codes.

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Verification of Payee

Explains how Verification of Payee compares the beneficiary name a payer enters against the name held on the account before a euro credit transfer is authorised, and what a match, close match, or no match means for the payer.

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SEPA Direct Debit core

Describes the pull-payment model of SEPA Direct Debit Core: how a signed mandate authorises collection, how a collection travels as a pain.008 and interbank pacs.003 message, and the roles the creditor and debtor banks play.

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SEPA Direct Debit exceptions and refunds

Explains how a SEPA Direct Debit collection can fail or unwind — rejects, refusals, returns, refunds, and reversals — including the eight-week no-questions refund window for authorised collections and the thirteen-month window for unauthorised ones.

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SEPA Direct Debit: B2B versus Core

The SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) Direct Debit Business-to-Business scheme differs from the Core scheme: no no-questions refund right for authorised collections, a mandatory mandate check by the debtor's bank, and eligibility limited to non-consumer payers.

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Request to Pay and e-mandates

What Request to Pay is as a messaging layer that lets a payee ask a payer to pay while the payer stays in control, and how e-mandates digitise direct-debit authorisations over existing rails.

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STEP2: the pan-European ACH

STEP2 is EBA CLEARING's pan-European automated clearing house: it validates and clears standard SEPA credit transfers in cycles, calculates each participant's net position, and settles those positions in central-bank money in TARGET2 — the clearing layer beneath a non-instant SCT.

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