Making euro payments easier and cheaper
We have been working with the European banking industry to create the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) which will enable you to move money as freely throughout Europe as you can within the UK.
What does SEPA mean for you?
SEPA brings improved efficiencies and we have reduced our charges to reflect this. This means charges will be applied at the reduced tariff of £5 per SEPA compliant payment. However, to benefit from these changes, we need you to help us by providing a few extra details when you set up a payment.
To assist you, please find below guidance on the details required to make SEPA payments.
What we need from you?
To help ensure the euro payments you make via Bankline are SEPA compliant, we need you to do the following:
- Set the priority of the payment to "standard"
- Include the beneficiary's international bank account number (IBAN) and bank identifier code (BIC)
- Select that the remitter (you) is paying the sending bank’s charge
- Select that the beneficiary is paying the foreign bank's charge.
If you have set up templates for euro payments in Bankline, these will need to be updated to include the changes we have outlined above. You will also need to update any payment files that you import to Bankline from your own systems. Non-compliant payments will not benefit from the price savings SEPA brings.
Making it easier for you
From today, "low" and "standard" priority euro payments sent through Bankline to banks in Europe* will be sent as SEPA payments, provided they are compliant.
We will soon be simplifying the Bankline service so that you will only see "urgent" or "standard" options when choosing the priority of a euro payment. In the meantime, to ensure that you benefit from SEPA straightaway, payments selected as "low" priority will automatically be sent by SEPA provided they are compliant.
To prepare for the streamlining of payment options in Bankline, please update your payment import files and templates, changing the priority to “standard” where “low” is currently selected.
Your relationship manager will be happy to answer any queries you may have or you may wish to visit our website www.rbs.co.uk/sepa
Please note:
- SEPA payments are non-urgent and will take a maximum of three days to reach the recipient.
- Urgent payments will take one day to reach recipients and the tariff remains unchanged by the introduction of SEPA.
- These charges apply to those accounts on our standard tariff.
- All other international payment tariffs remain the same.