The definition of a uniform, cross-country payment format that caters for credit transfers and direct debits is a major achievement of the SEPA project. The SEPA XML format is a subset of the new technical XML payment kernel and its related payment messages. The XML data format was designed by the IST Harmonization Team, a collaboration of initiatives from IFX, OAGi, TWIST and SWIFT, with representatives from Financial Institutions and Corporates to cover Corporate-to-Bank and Bank-to-Bank payment as well as payment status messages on a global basis and was certified in 2005 by ISO UNIFI (ISO 20022).

Banks have to “speak” XML when processing SEPA transactions and corporate clients can also take advantage of this flexible, new standard.

Deutsche Bank supports the use of the global XML ISO 20022 data format as well as the respective SEPA XML subsets for SEPA Credit Transfers and for SEPA Direct Debits.

In addition, Deutsche Bank supports SEPA Credit Transfers (and to a certain extend SEPA Direct Debits) with global formats that are currently used for customer-to-bank communication (Global CSV, EDIFACT, IDOC) as well as with certain local formats. Consequently, this will protect our customers’ investment as they can continue to use the formats globally as before and enhance the information for transactions that should follow SEPA schemes.

Regarding account information, Deutsche Bank offers two options by: 

• Supporting the new SWIFT XML camt messages (camt 053 / camt 052) that specifically cater for SEPA account information
• Including SEPA specific account information items (e.g. structured references) in today’s MT940/942 account information messages

SWIFT XML 20022 data format and the respective SEPA XML subset are supported by Deutsche Bank’s global access channel db-direct internet (incl. multi-bank capability) and host-to-host connections as well as our windows-based electronic banking tool direct MC and other local channels.


^{SWIFT is a trademark or registered trademark of S.W.I.F.T.SCRL in Belgium and/or other countries}