The

VOLUME

What is it?

The primary focus of the work of the EPSG is the 'SEPA Payments Standardisation Volume'.

Ultimately designed to support and promote European Payments Standardisation for the benefit of Payment Service Users in Europe (such as payers and payees), it provides common standardisation requirements for SEPA, which need to be adopted with a high priority in order to achieve that goal.

Developed and agreed by all relevant sectors active in payments in Europe, it demonstrates a strong self-commitment of the European stakeholders within the payment ecosystem and is well recognised by the European Central Bank and the European Commission.

Purpose of The Volume

In accordance with the vision of Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), the purpose of The VOLUME is to enable pay-ment standardisation and promote payments interoperability in a secure environment throughout SEPA.

The VOLUME aims to do this by defining a set of harmonised SEPA requirements (’SEPA Payments Standards’) ap-plicable to card-based and instant payments, in both face to face and remote environments.

Currently, the VOLUME is composed of a set of books that cover card-based payments, called the SEPA Card Stand-ardisation Volume. Following the expansion of scope of the EPSG beyond card payments at the beginning of 2023, this documentation is being completed to define SEPA requirements in the instant payment domain. Therefore, the next Volume edition (v11) will be issued as SEPA Payments Standardisation (SPS) Volume.

The SPS Volume

The purpose of the association is to harmonise payment acceptance through functional and security requirements. To make that possible, it publishes the SEPA Payments Standardisation (SPS) Volume, often shortened in the Volume.

The requirements contained in the Volume represent the building blocks on which market participants are able to develop detailed implementation specifications to meet their needs in a competitive environment.

The Volume has been developed for more than a decade. At the beginning, its focus was on card-based payments, in both face to face and remote environments (whilst the term ‘Cards’ is used, these requirements apply equally to all transactions where a card-based payment instrument is used, regardless of the form factor). Indeed, the initial full name of the Volume was the SEPA Cards Standardisations Volume.

Later, the association reckoned that the same level of harmonisation achieved in the Card domain could be reached to support the coexistence of other payment methods at the point of sale, enhancing convenience for both customers and merchants.

Now, the EPSG is working to update the Volume to include cards and instant credit transfers in a coherent way.

Main objectives of the volume

Consumers

Consumers are able to make payments and withdraw cash throughout SEPA, with the same ease and convenience as in their home country. Thus, they benefit from wider and harmonised acceptance of their payment instruments within SEPA. Payment standardisation leads to increased security, transparency and indirect cost reduction.

Merchants

A wider acceptance of payment instruments across SEPA increases the business opportunities for Merchants for both physical and virtual points of sale. They benefit from a more competitive acquiring and terminal market and are able to choose which schemes to accept and from which acquirer.

Payment Industry

The Payment Industry (schemes, payment service providers, merchants...) can better plan ahead their investments to implement innovations benefiting from synergies based on the standardised requirements of the VOLUME. It allows investment decisions and implementation of the payment industry based on stable SEPA-wide requirements.

Structure of the Volume

The Volume is structured as a set of Books, each describing an important aspect of the harmonised requirements.

The latest version of the Volume is version 11.0 and can be found here.

Life cycle of the Volume.

A new release of the Volume is published every two years:

Year 1 – The new life cycle workplan is agreed initiating the volume update process including:

Inclusion of the previous consultation comments deemed ‘for later’ to be addressed
Innovation aspects are introduced after an assessment process of the EPSG dedicated workgroup, the INNO ET
Update of the affected books in preparation of public consultation

Year 2 – Public consultation, feedback analysis and final version publication

In between the 2-years cycle, the EPSG may publish ‘Bulletins’ highlighting the specific changes that are necessary for one Book or another before the publication of the next volume release version.