Facilitating the roll out of SEPA Direct Debit services

SWIFT enriches its SEPA Routing Directory with Direct Debit information

Following the launch of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Credit Transfer Scheme in January 2008, banks are now getting ready for the gradual roll out of SEPA Direct Debit services. The SEPA Core Direct Debit scheme and the SEPA Business to Business Direct Debit scheme will go live in November 2009, the point in time when EU member states will have adopted a common legal framework for payments.

As the new SEPA instruments are gradually replacing local payments systems, the processing landscape is also drastically being reshaped. Multiple Clearing and Settlement Mechanisms now deliver payment processing services to route SEPA payments from origin to destination.

In this changing environment, high quality routing data is critical to keep the operational cost of processing SEPA payments low.  Accurate information is core to SWIFT's SEPA Routing Directory: one can look up financial institutions' adherence to the SEPA Credit Transfer and Direct Debit Schemes, check their operational readiness and see through which ACH they can be reached.” The result:  higher straight-through processing and reduced risk of misrouted transactions for outgoing SEPA payments.

SEPA participants already use it extensively to route SEPA Credit Transfers. Now, the SEPA routing directory is enriched to support the launch of the new SEPA Direct Debit schemes. Financial institutions can use a single reference to query SEPA readiness for any BIC and SEPA scheme and consult the best routing options.

Avox is a subsidiary of Deutsche Börse Group that specialises in collecting, validating and cleansing reference data.

To ensure the thoroughness and quality of the data, SWIFT has partnered with Avox.  Avox will collect and maintain the routing data for the SEPA Credit Transfer scheme and the two new SEPA Direct Debit schemes. "We chose Avox based on its long-standing experience in collecting counterparty data and their quality data standards" says Christoph Albers, Product Manager Information Products, SWIFT. "Avox like SWIFT has an outstanding track record and the financial community will benefit from its commitment to excellence."

Ken Price, CEO and co-founder of Avox, comments, "SWIFT has leveraged Avox's collaborative business entity data service for several years now with good results. It was a natural extension to leverage this same capability into the SEPA Routing Directory program with a view to maximizing data and service quality. This is a very exciting project for both firms."