The potential of SEPA credit transfer implementation in Croatia

Abstract

After joining the European Union, the Republic of Croatia became obliged to consolidate its laws and regulations with the EU's. European Commission's Regulation No 260/2012, obligatory for Croatia too, has set the 31st of October 2016 as the deadline for replacement of national euro credit transfer and direct debit schemes by SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) and SEPA Direct Debit for the EU member countries that do not use euro as their currency. From that date, use of SCT will be obligatory for the credit transfers in euro, but it has been decided that it will be obligatory for national currency kuna, too. Since SEPA is based on ISO 20022 norm, which is built upon XML language, it is not realistic to expect from business subjects, i.e. future SEPA users, the understanding of XML technologies and ISO 20022 norm necessary for creating SCT electronic payment order. For that reason, we have built a web application, which provides for users a simple web interface with forms to fill and facilitate their transit towards SCT. This paper explains SEPA and describes its implementation in Croatia, structure of SCT electronic payment initiation order format and the web application we designed for its creation.