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Payments companies have been invited to submit comments on draft guidance from the European Payments Council (EPC) on mobile-initiated SEPA (instant) credit transfers (MSCTs).
The EPC has given stakeholders until July 26 to respond to a consultation on a draft new edition of the Mobile Initiated SEPA (Instant) Credit Transfer Interoperability Guidance.
Building on the previous release in February 2022, this new version places a strong emphasis on technical interoperability.
“Mobile devices have achieved full market penetration and rich service levels making the mobile channel ideal for leveraging and promoting the use of SEPA payment schemes,” the executive summary says.
In addition, the EPC has said that cross-industry cooperation on specifications, guidelines and best practices has been identified as a “critical success factor” in this area, prompting the need for action.
The document considers the main interoperability challenges and opportunities for MSCTs.
The EPC has, meanwhile, opted not to use the draft guidance to address business cases and revenue models for the MSCT value chain, due to the fact that these are considered competitive.
The public consultation includes a limited number of detailed use cases, such as payee-presented mode, payer-presented mode and modes relying on payment initiation service providers (PISPs).
It also outlines the processing flows for these use cases, addressing both successful and unsuccessful transactions in contexts that require interoperability.
Although earlier versions or separate EPC publications covered topics such as security aspects, proximity technologies and QR-code specifications for MSCTs, the EPC has said that these areas will not be expanded in the third release.
Rather, a simplified maintenance process will be adopted.
Further, this guidance also incorporates updates in response to the EU’s newly adopted Instant Payments Regulation (IPR).
The guidance also continues to define the minimum data sets required for all interoperability messages between the respective MSCT service providers of the payer and the payee, and the EPC has additionally updated the interoperability models involving PISPs or a collecting payment service provider (CPSP) acting on behalf of the merchant.
