SEPA: The acronym SEPA stands for Single Euro Payments Area. This area is a home market area for payment traffic in the European Economic Area that makes paying within this area simpler and faster. The advantages: Thanks to SEPA, all of the financial transactions in countries that are taking part in this scheme are now governed by the same rules and regulations. This has made it easier and faster to make payments in the SEPA area.
SEPA transfers can be used to transfer money both domestically and to other SEPA countries. Individual SEPA payments can also be bundled into collective SEPA orders that are then all processed together.
Please note that SEPA transfers exceeding 12,500 Euros may also have to be reported to the Bundesbank (Z4 form).
Key information on SEPA payments:
To make a SEPA payment, you will have to provide the IBAN and BIC instead of the account number and sort code as is the case for normal transfers. I.e., if you are making a SEPA payment, you will have to provide the IBAN (International Bank Account Number) and BIC (Business Identifier Code / International Bank Code) in order to ensure that the beneficiary can be clearly identified.
SEPA transfers are credited within three bank days
All SEPA transfers made within the SEPA area are guaranteed to be credited to the beneficiary's account within a maximum of three bank days after order receipt.
Permitted characters
SEPA messages can contain the following characters (in accordance with UTF-8 character encoding or ISO-885933):
Permitted character code | Characters | Hexcode |
---|---|---|
Numeric characters | 0 to 9 | X'30' - X'39' |
Capitals | A to Z | X'41' - X'5A' |
Lower case | a to z | X'61' - 'X'7A' |
Apostrophe | "'" | X'27 |
Colon | ":" | X'3A |
Question mark | "?" | X'3F |
Comma | "," | X'2C |
Minus symbol | "-" | X'2D |
Space character | " " | X'20 |
Left bracket | "(" | X'28 |
Right bracket | ")" | X'29 |
Plus symbol | "+" | X'2B |
Forward slash | "/" | X'2F |
The SEPA countries currently include the following member countries: