A credit transfer is a payment order initiated by the payer: the payer sends a payment instruction to its bank, which then transfers the funds to the beneficiary’s bank.
The SEPA Credit Transfer will be used for euro-denominated transactions, between two accounts held by financial institutions located in the SEPA area.
Features of the SEPA Credit Transfer:
- payment will be executed within a maximum of three business days (this maximum execution time will be cut to one business day as from 2012 in accordance with the Payment Services Directive that is currently being transposed into French law);
- the full amount of the transaction will be credited to the beneficiary’s account (while banks will continue to be at liberty to set their own fees, financial intermediairies will not be allowed to charge extra fees);
- a field of up to 140 characters will be used to forward remittance data in full and without alteration right up to the beneficiary;
- the IBAN (International Bank Account Number) and BIC (Bank Identifier Code) will be used to identify the beneficiary’s account.