Standards

Single business and technical provisions for payment processing facilitate the development of an integrated payments market significantly. A fully automated data exchange throughout the payment value chain not only ensures convenient payment processing, but also contributes to the reduction of payment transaction costs.

SEPA business requirements

The payment has to contain all information required for payment execution, i.e. the payment amount, the bank account details and the names of the sender and receiver.
The European Payments Council has developed mandatory business requirements – rulebooks – for the payment information for:

• SEPA credit transfer scheme bank-to-bank domain;
• SEPA direct debit core scheme bank-to-bank domain;
• SEPA direct debit business-to-business scheme.

On 28 January 2008, upon the implementation of the SEPA credit transfer scheme in Latvia, Latvia's banks attained compliance with the SEPA business requirements for credit transfers. In 2009, Latvia's banks continue development by implementing the legal framework of SEPA direct debit applicable during the transition stage.

SEPA technical standards

Based on the universal financial industry UNIFI (ISO 20022) XML message standards developed by the International Organization for Standardisation, the European Payments Council has elaborated the SEPA payment message standards – implementation guidelines – for:

• SEPA credit transfer scheme: bank-to-bank domain and customer-to-bank domain;
• SEPA direct debit core scheme bank-to-bank domain;
• SEPA direct debit business-to-business scheme;
• SEPA direct debit core scheme e-mandates;
• SEPA direct debit business-to-business scheme e-mandates.

To comply with the SEPA technical requirements, some banks in Latvia are converting the previous SWIFT MT103 payment systems standard pursuant to the SEPA requirements. Banks have been implementing the respective changes in order to align with the respective services from 2008 to 2010. Latvia's banks have applied XML standard for the business-to-business stage since 2002. More detailed information is available in: Working Group documents on single standard for financial data exchange (FiDAViSta).