Up to now, we have considered the messages exchanged in the SCT scheme between sending and receiving banks. In this article and the next, we will zoom in on a bank and particularly on the specific role that they take in the exchange of messages. There is a trap to avoid at the beginning of...

In the previous article on-us transactions were introduced and we looked at them at the level of one bank. In this article, we continue our analysis of on-us transactions but considered now at bankgroup level. In a wider sense, on-us transactions occur when the originator bank and the beneficiary bank are separate entities but belong...

On-us transactions represent a significant part of transactions processed by banks. They can be classified in two groups: Intrabank and Intrabankgroup transactions. The word Intra is a prefix meaning "within something, inside something, on the inside". An intrabank transaction is a transaction exchanged inside or within the same bank. An intrabankgroup transaction is a transaction...

As we saw in a previous article, the SEPA Credit Transfer Rulebook obliges the scheme participants to exchange exception messages (the r-messages) during specific timeframes in the interbank space. The scheme does not say how many days before settlement a credit transfer can be forwarded to the clearing system. In the customer-to-bank space, the...

In this article, we continued our analysis of the SCT interbank messages. The previous article was about the pacs.008 and pacs.002 messages. The pacs.008 is used to transfer funds from Originator Bank to Beneficiary Bank. The pacs.002 is initiated to reject credit transfers that a CSM or Bank cannot process. As said in the...

Contrary to the messages used in the customer to bank space which are recommended, messages exchanged in the interbank space are mandatory. It means banks must comply with all the underlying SEPA rules. This is to insure that their messages can be received and processed by any participant to the interbank space. Banks can...

The EPC recommends three messages for the customer reporting. The bank can use one or many of them, according to client’s needs, to provide account reports, account statements and debit/credit notification. It is important to understand that these reporting messages are for customers which can integrate and process them in own IT systems. They...

Let me start by stressing out an important point about the EPC documents: the messages exchanged in the Customer-to-Bank space are recommended. It means that they are not mandatory. The Banks and their customers are not obliged to use them as they are specified in the Implementation Guidelines. And furthermore, a bank and his...