Corporate and retail customers are able to make euro credit transfers within Europe with identically structured payment orders covered by uniform conditions. Transaction initiation, formats, bank and account identification and processing rules do not differ regardless if they are made within national borders, e.g. within Germany, or across national borders, e.g. between Germany and France.

Key features of the SEPA Credit Transfer include: 

• The maximum execution time for SEPA credit transfers from electronic ordering to credit on the beneficiary account is 2 business days (1 from 2012)
• SEPA credit transfers are credited in full without deduction of fees from the principal amount
• IBAN and BIC replace national account numbers and sort codes
• The length of the remittance information has been fixed at a standard length of 140 characters, and banks are obliged to provide the full remittance information on account statements
• New optional data elements:
  -  Dedicated originator reference field (end-to-end reference)
  -  Dedicated on-behalf-of fields
  -  Purpose and category purpose codes
• Non-urgent mass payments in euro
• The SEPA XML format is binding for the exchange of payments between banks (however, banks may continue to accept other formats from customers for the instruction of SEPA payments)