EU transfer

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The EU transfer (also EU standard transfer or EU internal transfer ) was an international transfer within the European Economic Area . The EBA Clearing discontinued its XCT service for the processing of EU transfers in compliance with the price regulation on December 5, 2011. EU transfers within the meaning of the following article no longer exist. For the following development and current situation, see European Payments Area (SEPA).

Through various regulations, EU transfers compliant with the price regulation were treated as equivalent to domestic transfers. The legal basis for this was primarily the EU Regulation 2560/2001, also known as the EU Price Regulation, passed on July 1, 2003, which came into force in the EEA on November 8, 2003. It was an important push within the EEA to lower fees for cross-border payments in euros and to realize the desired domestic market for cashless payments by modernizing and developing a more integrated payment infrastructure. The initial fear that the prescribed harmonization of fees for credit transfers within and between EEA member states would lead to an increase in fees for domestic payments did not materialize.

The EU regulation 2560/2001 contains the following regulations:

  • Equalization of fees within and between the member states: The financial institution may only charge fees for transfers and electronic payment transactions ( e-banking and use of payment cards ) as for corresponding transfers that it makes within the member state in which it is established (Art . 3, paras. 1–2).
  • It applies to amounts up to € 50,000 (Art. 3, Para. 3)
  • To simplify processing, banks must provide their customers with the international bank account number (IBAN) and the BIC (Art. 5)
  • Permitted currencies are the euro and the currencies of the member states that wish to extend this regulation to their own currency (Art. 9). So far only Sweden has extended the regulation to the Swedish krona (SEK) in 2002.

Directive 2007/64 / EC (Art. 52, Paragraph 2) was also relevant for a price-compliant EU transfer, according to which the expenses for transfers in euros had to be shared between the recipient and the client (SHARE fee regulation). In addition, the financial institutions were able to set individual criteria for technical implementation, such as the mandatory use of the recipient's name, address, IBAN, BIC / SWIFT, etc.

When EU regulation 2560/2001 was adopted, the infrastructure for smooth processing of cross-border payments was not in place - costly agreements with correspondent banks, long processing times and low automation resulted in high costs. That is why the European banking sector announced in 2002 that it would create the Single European Payments Area (SEPA) by 2010 . The establishment of the SEPA led to the harmonization of procedures, regulations and standards for means of payment. This development of the SEPA proceeded independently of the EU regulation 2560 for the beneficiary EU transfers, but also stands in the background as a technical and organizational framework for international transfers.

Regulation (EC) No 924/2009 on cross-border payments in the Community eliminated differences between fees for cross-border and domestic payments in euros. Regulation (EU) No. 260/2012 stipulates the technical requirements for transfers and direct debits in euros.

In everyday life, the EU transfer was increasingly replaced by the SEPA transfer until it was discontinued by the European Payments Committee on December 5, 2011 . In Austria, the changeover finally took place on February 1, 2014.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Regulation (EC) No. 924/2009 (PDF)
  2. ↑ Regulation (EU) No. 260/2012 (PDF)
  3. ↑ The money order . help.gv.at
  4. ↑ The new money order . ( Memento from October 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) austrianpaymentscouncil.at