What is 'SEPA'?

The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is a self-regulatory initiative for the European banking industry championed by the European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB). The aim of the SEPA initiative is to improve the efficiency of cross border payments and the economies of scale by developing common standards, procedures, and infrastructure. The SEPA territory currently consists of 33 European countries -- the 28 EU states, together with Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Norway and Switzerland.

Part of that infrastructure includes two new SEPA instruments that were introduced in 2008:

• SEPA Credit Transfer (a Payables transaction in Oracle EBS)
• SEPA Core Direct Debit (a Receivables transaction in Oracle EBS)

A SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) is an outgoing payment instrument for the execution of credit transfers in Euro between customer payment accounts located in SEPA. SEPA Credit Transfers are executed on behalf of an Originator holding a payment account with an Originator Bank in favor of a Beneficiary holding a payment account at a Beneficiary Bank. In R12 of Oracle applications, the current SEPA credit transfer implementation is based on Version 5 of the "SEPA Credit Transfer Scheme Customer-To-Bank Implementation Guidelines" and the "SEPA Credit Transfer Scheme Rulebook" issued by European Payments Council (EPC). These guidelines define the rules to be applied to the UNIFI (ISO20022) XML message standards for the implementation of the SEPA Credit Transfers in the customer-to-bank space. This format is compliant with SEPA Credit Transfer version 6.

A SEPA Core Direct Debit (SDD) is an incoming payment instrument used for making domestic and cross-border payments within the 33 countries of SEPA, wherein the debtor (payer) authorizes the creditor (payee) to collect the payment from his bank account. The payment can be a fixed amount like a mortgage payment, or variable amounts such as those of invoices. The "SEPA Core Direct Debit" scheme replaces various country-specific direct debit schemes currently prevailing within the SEPA zone. SDD is based on the ISO20022 XML messaging standards, version 5.0 of the "SEPA Core Direct Debit Scheme Rulebook", and "SEPA Direct Debit Core Scheme Customer-to-Bank Implementation Guidelines". This format is also compliant with SEPA Core Direct Debit version 6.

EU Regulation #260/2012 established the technical and business requirements for both instruments in euro. The regulation is referred to as the "SEPA end-date regulation", and also defines the deadlines for the migration to the new SEPA instruments:

• Euro Member States: February 1, 2014
• Non-Euro Member States: October 31, 2016.

Oracle and SEPA

Within the Oracle E-Business Suite of applications, Oracle Payables (AP), Oracle Receivables (AR), and Oracle Payments (IBY) provide SEPA transaction capabilities for the following releases, as noted:

• Release 11.5.10.x -  AP & AR
• Release 12.0.x - AP & AR & IBY
• Release 12.1.x - AP & AR & IBY
• Release 12.2.x - AP & AR & IBY

Resources

To assist our customers in migrating, using, and troubleshooting SEPA functionality, a number of resource documents related to SEPA are available on My Oracle Support (MOS), including:

R11i: AP: White Paper - SEPA Credit Transfer V5 support in Oracle Payables, Doc ID 1404743.1
R11i: AR: White Paper - SEPA Core Direct Debit v5.0 support in Oracle Receivables, Doc ID 1410159.1
R12: IBY: White Paper - SEPA Credit Transfer v5 support in Oracle Payments, Doc ID 1404007.1
R12: IBY: White Paper - SEPA Core Direct Debit v5 support in Oracle Payments, Doc ID 1420049.1
R11i/R12: AP/AR/IBY: Get Help Setting Up, Using, and Troubleshooting SEPA Payments in Oracle, Doc ID 1594441.2
R11i/R12: Single European Payments Area (SEPA) - UPDATES, Doc ID 1541718.1
R11i/R12: FAQs for Single European Payments Area (SEPA), Doc ID 791226.1