On 24 September 2019, the European Payments Council (EPC) published updated guidelines on the appearance of mandates for the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Direct Debit (SDD) Core Scheme and the SDD Business-to-Business (B2B) Scheme.
The guidelines contain EPC guidance on the visual presentation of mandates issued by creditors under the SEPA SDD Core and the SDD B2B Scheme as part of their offer to debtors to use the SDD schemes as a way for making payments. The guidance illustrates several ways to reduce the mandate size without losing any essential content whilst still remaining rulebook compliant.
The EPC also includes an important note on the provision of the debtor bank’s bank identifier code (BIC), advising that it remains mandatory in SDD transactions.
The guidelines are intended to supplement section 4.7.2 of the SDD Core and SDD B2B Scheme Rulebooks, which define the rules for the content of SDD Core and SDD B2B mandates respectively.