SEPA terminology

Basic Bank Account Number - the national form of an account number.

Bank Identifier Code - a bank’s electronic address with which a bank can be identified in international payment transfers. The same as the SWIFT code.

Bank to Customer - from the bank to the customer.

Customer to Bank - from the customer to the bank.

European Central Bank.

Euro Banking Association - a service centre providing settlement and cover transfer services regarding interbank payments; an ACH (automated clearing house), which Nordea will use in SEPA payments.

Europay MasterCard Visa - standard for new chip-based debit cards in international common use.

European Payments Council - a European decision-making body common to European banks in European-wide payment matters. A body developing the SEPA standards and rules.

An EU payment is euro-denominated. A cross-border account transfer between and within the member states of the European Union, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein. EU payments are transferred at the price of domestic account transfers. The SEPA account transfer will replace the EU payment.

International Bank Account Number - the international form of an account number, which is formed of BBAN by inserting the country code and control numbers. Customers can obtain the IBANs of their accounts from their own bank. The IBAN of the beneficiary of a payment will be marked in invoices, for example.

A batch of payment-related standards developed and maintained by a standardisation organisation operating under the UN.

Standards have been drafted for both account transfers and direct debit. Moreover, the standards include application instructions for messages transferred from the customer to the bank, messages between banks, messages transferred from the bank to the customer and messages required by exceptional handling of payments.

Pan-European Automated Clearing House - a clearing system for payment transfers between European banks.

The Single Euro Payments Area consists of 27 EU member states, three EEA countries (Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) and Switzerland.

A debit card meeting the SEPA standards and functioning in the same way all over SEPA.

SEPA direct debit meets the pan-European rules and standards within SEPA.

Web Services is a data transfer protocol based on international standards maintained by the W3C organisation. Web Services is also a new corporate security and message protocol used in the banks’ Cash Management services (i.a. SEPA Credit Transfer).