Since 1 st February 2014, SEPA became a reality and succeeded in harmonising the European payment landscape. However, in order to support strong local market practices, some local flavours remain applicable in each country. In some others, the migration of specific products still have to be completed. This document will help you understand the local specifics applicable in Spain. Intending to provide a global picture of the transition to SEPA, it also describes the elements that permitted the migration from the legacy means of payment. POST MIGRATION STATUS The Spanish domestic market offers a set of payment means that are regulated by the CSB (Consejo Superior Bancario, meaning High Banking Council). Amongst these, the legacy domestic formats for credit transfers and direct debits are not accepted anymore, since 17 th March 2014 for credit transfers and 9 th June 2014 for direct debits. But, as Spain has a waiver in formats until February 2016, new flat file versions of credit transfers and direct debits have been set in place, to integrate all the SEPA mandatory information. These formats and all other format supporting all mandatory SEPA information are allowed until 1 st February 2016, thanks to the local waiver. The CSB 32 and 58 received the status of niche products, which also allow their usage until 1 st February 2016.
Spain was supporting three legacy credit transfer formats, amongst which only one remains accepted today: Description Validity Norma 34 Domestic format for domestic credit transfer Phased out since 17 March 2014 Norma 34.1 Domestic format for domestic and international credit transfer Waived until the 1 st of February 2016. After this date, it will remain in use for international payments in foreign currencies and EUR payments out of the SEPA zone Norma 34.14 This recent version of the N34 has been introduced in order to facilitate the use of debtor and creditor accounts in IBAN format and comply to SEPA requirements Thanks to this feature, this format is able to hold all the information required to generate a SEPA compliant credit transfer. Waived until the 1 st of February 2016. pain.001 is the XML standard that supports SCT. Besides considering the format proposed by the EPC, there are few specific points to take into account: pain.001 currently exists in 3 versions. A company that starts its migration today should implement the last version pain.001.001.03, which is defined in the Rulebook 7 (downloadable on the EPC website). Spanish banks agreed to follow the standard recommendations of the EPC. Beside credit transfers, N34.14 and pain.001 can also be used to issue bank cheques. This usage comes with some additional specificities that should be respected.
Spain was supporting five domestic direct debit formats. Four of them remain allowed until the 1 st February 2016: Type Description Validity Continuity CSB 19 Norma 19 Initial domestic collection file format for B2C direct debits. Norma 19.14 These new versions of the Norma 19 have been introduced in order to facilitate the migration. They are able to hold all the Norma 19.44 information required to generate a SEPA compliant Direct Debit. Phased out since 9th June 2014 Waived until the 1 st of February 2016 The Norma 19.14 corresponds to the Core/COR1 scheme. The Norma 19.44 corresponds to the B2B scheme. CSB 32 Norma 32 Negotiable instrument Niche product The product is maintained until the 1 st of February 2016 CSB 58 Norma 58 DD to be collected or anticipated Niche product The product is maintained until the 1 st of February 2016 Legacy mandates remain valid for SDD Core/COR1 Legacy mandates remain valid for SDD Core/COR1 Legacy mandates are NOT valid for this format No continuity Legacy mandates remain valid for SDD Core/COR1
Spanish banks agreed to follow the standard recommendations of the EPC, without any specificity. Cor1 is a variant of the Core scheme, that allows a creditor to send transactions one day before the collection date, instead of the two/five days initially mandatory in the Core scheme. It has mainly been developed for the countries where this level of service was already applicable in the legacy scheme, to avoid reducing the efficiency of collections while migrating to SEPA. As Spain is one of them, Spanish banks fully adopted the Cor1 scheme. To be able to use SEPA direct debit, your first administrative step is to get a SEPA Creditor Identifier. This number will identify your company when collecting from all the SEPA area. Note you have the possibility to request one SEPA CI for each of your business activities. Spain has the particularity that the creditor himself should calculate the CI. The Spanish format is the following: ES97ZZZM23456789 The first 2 characters indicate the country code: ES 3 rd and 4 th are the standard SEPA check digit. 5 th to 7 th indicate the creditor s business code (as mentioned, a creditor may use a different codes to identify their different business activities). It is followed by a set of 9 characters indicating the national Creditor Identifier, which is depending the cases: For Legal Entities: NIF ( Número de Identificación Fiscal ) For Individuals: DNI / NIF ( Documento Nacional de Identidad / Número de Identificación Fiscal ) For Non-Resident Spanish Individuals, for Spanish Individuals under 14 and for Non-Resident Foreign Individuals doing transactions with tax transcendence: NIF For Foreign Individuals: NIE ( Número de Identidad de Extranjero ) The Spanish market recognizes the standard paper format, but also any format that may be recognized as valid by a judge in case of dispute. In Spain telephonic recorded mandates, electronic mandates and paper mandates are frequently used. In Spain, the CSB.N.50 regulates the mandate templates.
The Regulation N 260/2012, article 7 Validity of mandates and right to a refund, allows that existing mandates within a legacy direct debit scheme continue to be used within SEPA. Migrating a mandate means that you have already a domestic mandate that authorizes you to debit the account of one of your customers, and that you will continue using the same mandate, but with SEPA compliant collections. A mandate is considered as migrated when its first related collection in SEPA format has been performed successfully. The benefit of the migration is that you can continue to debit your customers without asking them to resign a SEPA mandate. Mandates that have not been migrated yet should be migrated before their legal expiration, which is 36 months after the last debit performed under the legacy scheme. To migrate your mandates, you should consider the two main following points: The existing N.19 and N.58 mandates remain valid for SDD Core/COR1 (XML format or Txt plain format N19.14). SDD B2B (XML format or txt plain format N.19.44) will always require the signature of a new mandate. Note that in Spain, the microenterprises are considered as business, and can therefore be declared as debtor of a B2B mandate. The mandate reference should be the same unique reference used In the legacy product The date of signature must be set to 2009-10-31.
A conversion service provided by the Central Bank of Spain is available online, to convert any Spanish BBAN to the related BIC and IBAN: http://www.sepaesp.es/herramienta/conversion.htm In case you need to convert a large database of accounts, your BNPP point of contact will be able to guide you to the best partners. In Spain, the IBAN is composed of 24 characters with the following structure: The first two characters identify the country of the account and are therefore always: ES. The next two characters correspond to the standard IBAN check digit. The remaining twenty characters identify the account : the financial institution (4 digits), the office of the account (4 digits), the check digits (2 digits) and the actual BBAN (10 digits). Example: ES 06 9000 0001 21 0123456789 The BIC can easily be derivated from the 8 first BBAN characters: - The 4 first identify the financial institution (in Spanish Entitad) - The 4 next identify the office (in Spanish Oficinia) By using the correct referential, this information is sufficient to derive the related BIC. Example: BNPAESMS