Synergies for corporate payment processes thanks to SEPA and UNIFI

31 May 2010 - UNIFI and SEPA represent the standardisation trends in the field of payment transactions and together with modern e-banking systems offer interesting cost saving potentials.

The SEPA Credit Transfer and the SEPA Direct Debit are the first payment instruments released by the European Payments Council (EPC) for the Single Euro Payments Area. They are based on the ISO standard for financial services messaging ISO 20022 or UNIFI (UNIversal Financial Industry message scheme) and thus represent a UNIFI subset. UNIFI describes a metadata repository of globally accepted message types. These message types are structured in XML and cover a large number of business transactions among banks and between banks and customers.

Corporates that handle payment transactions in SEPA formats profit from favourable cost structures. Large organisations with an international footprint can use uniform UNIFI formats to shape accounting and payment processes. The rich information capacity of UNIFI formats allows corporates to deploy them in a way that fits their individual needs. The increased interoperability supports straight-through-processing (STP) especially with a modern e-banking solution like CoCoNets MULTIVERSA IFP International Finance Portal.

CoCoNet is continuously monitoring regulatory changes within the payments business and influences technological developments in expert committees such as the German ZKA association representing the German banking community. Therefore CoCoNet’s future-proof e-banking solutions offer the best conditions for customers to stay up to date and to meet all regulatory requirements.