EPC 2026 Rulebook Change Proposals: What to Check in the Decision Pack

On 9 November 2026 the European Payments Council (EPC) published the five Change Proposal Submission Documents for its 2026 rulebook change management cycle: one each for SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT), SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst), SEPA Direct Debit (SDD) Core, SDD Business-to-Business (B2B) and One-Leg Out Instant Credit Transfer (OCT Inst). Alongside these EPC 2026 rulebook change proposals, the EPC released the consolidated positions of the Scheme End-User Multi-Stakeholder Group (SEU MSG) and the Scheme Technical Player Multi-Stakeholder Group (STP MSG).

For payment service providers (PSPs) that adhere to these schemes, this pack settles which 2026 change requests go into the next rulebook versions, because each document records the final decision of the Payment Scheme Management Board (PSMB) on every change proposal. The March 2026 consultation documents initially envisaged publication in November 2026 and implementation in November 2027. The EPC has since revised that timetable: the rulebooks resulting from the 2026 change-management cycle are now scheduled for publication in the second quarter of 2027, with entry into effect at the end of the third quarter of 2028 at the earliest. The exact effective date remains to be confirmed.

The recommendations the EPC put to consultation in March 2026 show what was proposed for each scheme; any of them may have changed at the decision stage.

Related reading: OCT Inst Scheme: Instant Payments Beyond SEPA

EPC 2026 rulebook change proposals: the cycle calendar

The March consultation documents originally linked the proposed November 2027 effective date to the Swift Standards MX Release 2027 calendar, identifying 14 or 21 November 2027 as possibilities. That timetable has been superseded. The EPC now intends to align the next rulebooks with the expected PSR/PSD3 implementation timetable, with entry into effect at the end of the third quarter of 2028 at the earliest. PSPs should use the effective date subsequently confirmed by the EPC rather than either former November 2027 candidate.

Under section 4.2.7 of the EPC Payment Scheme Management Rules (the Internal Rules), the normal minimum implementation notice for a PSMB-approved change proposal is six months after its publication on the EPC website, with longer notice possible for complex changes. The Rules also permit shorter periods for amendments to the Internal Rules (not earlier than 30 calendar days after PSMB approval) and for non-operational changes designated by the PSMB for expedited implementation. Exceptional changes and changes required for regulatory reasons follow separate procedures (sections 4.2.8 and 4.2.9). The consultation documents describe 12 months as the industry best-practice lead time for PSPs and their suppliers.

What a Change Proposal Submission Document records

After the consultation, the Payment Scheme Evolution and Maintenance Working Group (PSEMWG) collects the support for each change request, develops change proposals from the comments, and consolidates them in the Change Proposal Submission Document together with each change request and the related non-confidential comments. That document goes to the PSMB for decision and to the SEU MSG and STP MSG for their positions. The PSMB then decides whether to accept each change proposal after considering those positions.

Two mapping details matter. First, a change proposal may bring together more than one change, drawn from one or more change requests, so a change request number does not always map one-to-one to a rulebook amendment. Second, the OCT Inst change requests were reviewed by the EPC One-Leg Out Task Force (OLO TF), and its recommendations sat in the OCT Inst consultation document where the other four carried PSEMWG recommendations.

Rejected items stay visible. The Internal Rules require the EPC to publish all change requests and change proposals, whether the PSMB accepted or rejected them. A proposal of strategic relevance to the EPC, for example one relating to the geographic scope of the schemes or to the change release cycle itself, also needs EPC Board endorsement before the PSMB can accept it.

What was on the table in the five rulebooks

The March 2026 consultation documents listed 20 change requests for major changes to the SCT rulebook, 35 for SCT Inst, 16 for SDD Core, 14 for SDD B2B and 16 for OCT Inst; those counts include items the documents list as withdrawn. Change request numbers are shared across the five documents, so #04 is the same request wherever it appears. In each of the five documents the EPC stated that, at that point, no item had been identified that required a rulebook change because of EU legislation.

Selected change requests with operational reach are listed below, with the recommendation each carried into consultation. These are not the PSMB outcomes.

Row #27 is the reason to read each scheme’s document separately: one request from the Portuguese PSP community drew three different consultation-stage outcomes, and final decisions can differ by scheme in the same way.

Three proposals that reach past message formats

#12: making OCT Inst adherence mandatory

Change request #12 came from the EPC Director General. The SCT Inst consultation document explains that one-leg out transactions are not permitted under the SCT and SCT Inst schemes, and that on 6 November 2025 the EPC wrote to all SCT and SCT Inst participants about the risks of such non-compliant practices. The EPC was evaluating whether to make OCT Inst adherence mandatory under certain conditions for relevant PSPs, at least as Euro Leg-Based Payee’s PSP, with its final decision also resting on an internal business and legal assessment; the PSEMWG made no recommendation because the request concerns another scheme. In my reading, this is the item whose outcome could change which schemes a PSP adheres to, so it belongs with the adherence owner as well as the payments build team.

#06: the ISO 20022 migration

The four SEPA schemes migrated to the 2019 ISO 20022 message version in March 2024. In the March 2026 consultation, change request #06 proposed migrating all five rulebooks to a newer ISO 20022 version in November 2029. The EPC’s subsequent decision changed that timetable: ISO 20022 migration is now an accepted change for the 2030 rulebooks, with entry into effect planned for November 2030. The message version will be selected during finalisation of the related implementation guidelines, and the EPC intends to publish the 2030 rulebooks and technical documents approximately 18 months in advance, aiming for the second quarter of 2029. The EPC’s March 2026 consultation document cites the revised FATF Recommendation 16 as one driver: in the EPC’s reading, only the date of birth of a natural-person payer must be provided in international payments as of the end of 2030.

#04 and #10: name length and repayment

For SCT Inst, the consultation document said #04 would change only the customer-to-PSP and inter-PSP implementation guidelines, which puts customer payment files in scope as well as interbank processing. Its rationale links directly to Verification of Payee: the VOP scheme already allows 140-character names, so a payee name returned in a VOP response can exceed what an SCT Inst instruction accepts today (see our VOP 2.0 scheme rulebook coverage). Change request #10 considered pacs.008 and pacs.004 for the new inter-PSP repayment procedure. The EPC now confirms that pacs.004 has been selected for the formal SCT Inst repayment procedure included among the accepted business changes for the 2028 rulebook. PSPs should verify the detailed usage requirements against the published implementation guidelines before building the procedure; this is an accepted future change, not a requirement of the currently applicable 2025 rulebook.

Reading the SEU MSG and STP MSG positions

Under the Internal Rules, the SEU MSG gathers end-user representative associations, and the STP MSG gathers technical players that provide services to scheme participants or their end users. Each sends the PSMB a consolidated position on the change requests and change proposals in the submission document.

A position paper is advice to the PSMB; the outcome is the PSMB decision recorded in the submission document. PSPs had a separate channel: the Internal Rules ask PSP communities to poll their participating members during the consultation, and that community feedback indicates whether a majority of responding participants in the community support a change request.

What sits outside this pack

The end date for the unstructured address format sits on a separate PSMB track: on 29 October 2026 the PSMB postponed setting a new end date and will reconvene by February 2027, with structured and hybrid formats already supported (background in our note on the SEPA structured address migration delay). The VOP rulebook version 2.0 has its own change cycle, with publication envisaged by the end of November 2026.

Legal deadlines also sit outside the scheme cycle. The instant-payment obligations in Article 5a(8) of Regulation (EU) No 260/2012, as amended by Regulation (EU) 2024/886, apply to PSPs that offer their payment service users a service of sending and receiving credit transfers, independently of EPC rulebook releases. PSPs in non-euro-area Member States other than payment institutions and electronic-money institutions must offer receipt of instant euro credit transfers by 9 January 2027 and sending by 9 July 2027. Payment institutions and electronic-money institutions in euro-area Member States must offer both sending and receiving by 9 April 2027. Payment institutions and electronic-money institutions in non-euro-area Member States must offer receiving by 9 April 2027 and sending by 9 July 2027.

A limited derogation for certain national-currency accounts in non-euro-area Member States applies until 9 June 2028 (see our SEPA Instant Payments Regulation guide). PSPs adhering ahead of the relevant January 2027 IPR deadline can use the exceptional December 2026 EPC Register of Participants publication cycle, whose adherence receipt deadline is 20 November 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

We join SCT Inst through the December 2026 register cycle. Which rulebook version applies to us?

The currently applicable SCT Inst rulebook is the 2025 rulebook, version 1.2, published on 30 September 2026. A PSP with an operational readiness date of 4 January 2027 under the exceptional December 2026 register cycle would therefore join under the 2025 rulebook. The next regular version will be the 2028 SCT Inst rulebook, scheduled to take effect at the end of the third quarter of 2028 at the earliest, on a date the EPC has yet to confirm. The PSP must comply with that subsequent version from its actual effective date.

A change request we supported was rejected. Can a community still offer the feature?

Possibly, as an Additional Optional Service (AOS), where the reason given is that the item is not fit for SEPA-wide use (option d). The consultation documents note that such an item can be handled as an AOS by interested communities, which the EPC may later consider for a rulebook. Change request #07, recommended for incorporation (option b) in all five March 2026 consultation documents, would require local, national and pan-European participant communities to first present the characteristics, business rules and technical specifications of a proposed Additional Optional Service to the EPC for review by the relevant EPC bodies. Communities should check the PSMB decision on #07 in the relevant Change Proposal Submission Document before launching an AOS.

Can the EPC amend a rulebook outside the two-year cycle?

Yes. The Internal Rules allow exceptional changes, where failure to act could disrupt the schemes, and changes for regulatory reasons, both implementable from the business day after publication. The consultation documents also reserve the EPC’s right to amend the rulebooks at any time to keep them compliant with EU legislation.

Related Articles

• OCT Inst Scheme: Instant Payments Beyond SEPA: how the OCT Inst scheme handles the euro leg of international instant payments.
• EPC SEPA Structured Address Migration Delay: the PSMB decisions on the unstructured address end date.
• EPC Verification of Payee 2.0 Scheme Rulebook: the separate change cycle for VOP rulebook version 2.0.
• SEPA Instant Payments Regulation: the legal deadlines that run alongside the scheme rulebooks.
• EPC Register of Participants: December 2026 Cycle: the exceptional adherence cycle ahead of the relevant January 2027 IPR deadline.

Sources and References

• EPC, “2026 payment scheme rulebook change proposals and stakeholder positions published” (9 November 2026): europeanpaymentscouncil.eu
• EPC, 2026 Public Consultation: EPC Payment Scheme Change Proposal Submission Documents: EPC document library
• EPC, Multi-Stakeholder Group positions on 2026 Change Proposals for the EPC payment scheme rulebooks: EPC document library
• EPC, “The EPC SEPA payment schemes change-management process” (Evolution of the schemes: publication of the 2026-cycle rulebooks in the second quarter of 2027): europeanpaymentscouncil.eu
• EPC, “EPC rulebook and IGs to implement the SCT Inst scheme” (current rulebook version, accepted business changes, 2028 and 2030 rulebook timetable): europeanpaymentscouncil.eu
• EPC008-26, SCT Scheme Rulebook: Public Consultation on 2026 Change Requests (13 March 2026): PDF
• EPC009-26, SCT Inst Scheme Rulebook: Public Consultation on 2026 Change Requests (13 March 2026): PDF
• EPC010-26, SDD Core Scheme Rulebook: Public Consultation on 2026 Change Requests (13 March 2026): PDF
• EPC011-26, SDD B2B Scheme Rulebook: Public Consultation on 2026 Change Requests (13 March 2026): PDF
• EPC012-26, OCT Inst Scheme Rulebook: Public Consultation on 2026 Change Requests (13 March 2026): PDF
• EPC207-14, EPC Payment Scheme Management Rules, version 5.0 (sections 4.2 to 4.4): PDF
• EPC177-26, Status Update on EPC Payment and Payment-Related Schemes for the 18 June 2026 ERPB meeting (ERPB/2026/003): ECB
• EPC, “EPC defers setting new end date for unstructured address format until February 2027”: europeanpaymentscouncil.eu
• EPC, “EPC adds exceptional December 2026 Register of Participants publication cycle”: europeanpaymentscouncil.eu
• Regulation (EU) 2024/886 as regards instant credit transfers in euro, inserting Article 5a(8) into Regulation (EU) No 260/2012: EUR-Lex

Before the 2028 rulebooks land

The next scheduled milestone is publication of the 2028 payment scheme rulebooks and implementation guidelines in the second quarter of 2027. Before then, PSPs should map their tracked change requests to the relevant change proposals, PSMB decisions, affected schemes and technical specifications, starting with #04, #06, #10, #12 and #22. The implementation plan should distinguish changes expected to apply with the 2028 rulebooks, no earlier than the end of the third quarter of 2028, from the separate ISO 20022 migration planned for November 2030. Exact dates and final implementation specifications remain subject to the relevant EPC publications.

Disclaimer: The information on RegReportingDesk.com is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal, regulatory, tax, or compliance advice. Always consult your compliance officer, legal counsel, or the relevant supervisory authority for guidance specific to your institution.