The next major facet of the single euro payments area (SEPA), which will be introduced in 2016, was the focus of a presentation by financial data provider Accuity at the EBADay conference in Amsterdam.
The group said that there was a clear adoption of standards set by the European Payments Council (EPC) in 2014 for euro payments across the SEPA region. ‘IBAN only’ regulation marks the next instalment of SEPA. From next year banks may no longer compel their originating customers to provide a bank identification Code (BIC) and they need only provide an international bank account number (IBAN).
“SEPA instituted some real game changers in the payments world,” said Sarkis Akmakjian, senior director, product management at Accuity. “Considering the burden that banks had to take on in terms of adopting SEPA, it was a challenge to assume additional costs in changing systems to accommodate ‘IBAN only’ as well.
“However, the ‘IBAN only’ rule fits very well into a world where the use of online payment systems is becoming more prevalent, and online payment system product offerings are proving to be a differentiator in the market for financial institutions.”
As a provider of BICs for every IBAN, Accuity itself has responded to the changeover by launching its ‘IBAN Complete’ solution, which provides complete information for SEPA- and IBAN-compliant payment messages.