IBAN & SEPA
European Payments Council
The European Payments Council (EPC) is the decision-making and coordination body of the European banking industry for payments. It designs and maintains the payment scheme rulebooks that govern SEPA transactions, including the SEPA Credit Transfer, SEPA Direct Debit, and SEPA Instant Credit Transfer schemes.
The EPC brings together payment service providers from across the SEPA zone to agree on common rules, standards, and best practices. It publishes detailed scheme rulebooks that specify message formats, processing timelines, exception handling, and participant obligations. These rulebooks are updated annually, and all banks that participate in SEPA schemes are contractually bound to follow them. The EPC also manages the scheme participant directories and handles dispute resolution between members.
Without the EPC, there would be no unified set of rules for euro payments across Europe. Its rulebooks ensure that a credit transfer initiated in Portugal is processed identically to one initiated in Finland. For businesses integrating with SEPA, the EPC rulebooks are the definitive reference for understanding processing deadlines, mandatory data fields, and refund rights.
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