SEPA payments

SEPA payments — SCT, SCT Inst and SDD through a single API.

topropay's orchestration layer puts the SEPA scheme triplet behind one integration: SEPA Credit Transfer for next-business-day push, SEPA Instant Credit Transfer for under-10-second 24×7 settlement, and SEPA Direct Debit for mandated recurring collections. Connected banks cover the EU, EEA, the UK and the SEPA microstates.

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36
SEPA countries
<10s
SCT Inst settlement
€100k
SCT Inst per-payment cap
1
API surface
UK SEPA scheme hub
The SEPA zone, including the UK, reached through one API.

The short version

The three SEPA payments schemes, briefly

Three scheme variants under one umbrella. Pick the one that matches the flow; the unified API absorbs the difference at the integration surface.

  1. SCT

    SEPA Credit Transfer

    Payer-initiated push payment. Funds move from the payer's account to the beneficiary's account on the next business day, in euro, across every SEPA-zone bank. The default rail for B2B invoicing, salary, refunds and treasury movements.

  2. SCT Inst

    SEPA Instant Credit Transfer

    Real-time variant of SCT. Settlement in under ten seconds, 24×7×365, capped per-payment at €100k (raised over time). The default rail for any flow where the payer or the beneficiary cannot wait for the next business day.

  3. SDD

    SEPA Direct Debit

    Beneficiary-initiated pull payment under a mandate signed by the payer. Two flavours: SDD Core (consumer) and SDD B2B. The default rail for recurring billing in euro — subscriptions, utilities, memberships.

Key benefits

Why merchants choose to accept sepa payments through orchestration

Five outcomes show up consistently once the SEPA scheme triplet sits behind a single orchestration layer instead of three direct bank integrations.

  1. One API across the SEPA scheme triplet

    SCT, SCT Inst and SDD operate behind the same unified payments API. Switching between them is a request-payload property, not a separate integration. Webhooks and reconciliation share one shape regardless of which scheme moved the money.

  2. Connected banks that accept SEPA payments across the zone

    topropay's connected banking partners cover the SEPA scheme participant base — the platform handles the per-bank file formats, scheme participation reach and end-of-day cutoffs so the merchant sees a single uniform interface.

  3. Reach the UK on equivalent rails post-Brexit

    SEPA payments UK flows continue to operate after Brexit under UK SEPA scheme participation; topropay routes UK euro flows through SEPA-participating UK banks where applicable, and via Faster Payments for GBP equivalents — same dashboard, same reconciliation feed.

  4. Reconcile SEPA settlement alongside card and APM ledgers

    SCT, SCT Inst and SDD settlement files normalise into the same ledger as card and APM settlements. Finance closes one export per day rather than reconciling SEPA, card and bank rails as separate streams.

  5. Mandate lifecycle, dispute handling and return codes built in

    SDD mandates, refund windows, R-message handling and chargeback equivalents (reject, return, refund) are wired into the operator portal. Merchants don't write mandate-tracking code; the platform exposes mandate state, expiry and revocation as first-class API objects.

How it works

From API call to bank credit, across the SEPA scheme rails

Five stages between submitting a SEPA instruction through the API and the funds landing at the beneficiary account, regardless of which scheme moved the money.

  1. 01

    Initiation

    Merchant or payer submits the payment instruction through topropay's API (SCT/SCT Inst) or via a stored SDD mandate. Strong customer authentication runs on the payer leg when SCA applies.

  2. 02

    Validation

    topropay validates IBAN, BIC (where required), purpose code, end-to-end ID and mandate state, then signs and submits to the connected bank under the relevant scheme.

  3. 03

    Scheme processing

    The instruction enters the EBA Clearing or equivalent CSM (Clearing & Settlement Mechanism) under SCT, SCT Inst or SDD rules. SCT Inst clears in under 10s; SCT clears next business day; SDD clears on the requested due date.

  4. 04

    Beneficiary credit

    Funds land on the beneficiary account at the receiving bank. Status is propagated back through the scheme to topropay and surfaced as a signed webhook to your integration.

  5. 05

    Reconciliation

    Settlement, fees, returns and refund events normalise into one ledger keyed off the original end-to-end ID, exported daily into your ERP.

Settlement timing

SEPA payments time by scheme, side by side

The most common SEPA buyer question — "how long does it take?" — depends on which scheme runs the instruction. The matrix below makes the trade-offs visible at a glance.

Scheme Cutoff / submission Settlement Per-payment cap Operating hours
SCT Same-day cutoff Next business day No regulatory cap Business hours
SCT Inst <10 seconds Real time €100k per payment 24×7×365
SDD Core Pre-notification window Due date (consumer) No regulatory cap Business days
SDD B2B Pre-notification window Due date (B2B) No regulatory cap Business days

Post-Brexit

SEPA payments UK — still in scope, with Faster Payments on the GBP side

Despite Brexit, the United Kingdom remained a participating jurisdiction in the SEPA schemes — UK-domiciled banks still participate in SCT, SCT Inst and SDD for euro flows. topropay routes SEPA payments UK instructions through SEPA-participating UK banks; the merchant-facing API surface is identical to a eurozone setup.

For GBP-denominated flows the platform routes via UK Faster Payments. A UK merchant that needs both EUR and GBP rails gets them behind one integration, with both streams reconciled into the same daily ledger export rather than two parallel files merged manually.

Main use cases

What merchants do with SCT, SCT Inst and SDD on the platform

Six representative flows, each picking the SEPA scheme that fits the settlement and mandate requirement of the underlying business pattern.

  • Subs

    Recurring billing in euro

    SDD Core mandates collect monthly or annual subscriptions in EUR; mandate lifecycle, retries and R-message handling sit in the operator portal.

  • B2B

    B2B invoicing and AR

    SCT and SDD B2B handle invoice settlement at scale; end-to-end IDs reconcile inbound credits against open invoices without manual matching.

  • Payouts

    Marketplace payouts and treasury

    SCT Inst settles seller payouts in seconds and 24×7, turning Friday-evening payouts from a pain point into a routine flow.

  • Refunds

    Refunds and gig-economy disbursements

    Refunding a euro purchase or paying a contractor lands on SCT Inst rails with the same API call your other authorisation flows use.

  • Tax/HR

    Salary, tax and government payments

    SCT runs business-day salary and tax runs; SCT Inst can carry the late-cutoff cases that would otherwise slip to the following business day.

  • Charity

    Donations and recurring fundraising

    SDD mandates and one-off SCT donations land alongside card donations in the same ledger; gift-aid metadata is preserved through the API.

Connected reach

Banks that accept SEPA payments, organised by region

The connected banking footprint covers the full SEPA participant set across these categories. The live list per merchant is in the dashboard, scoped to the region and scheme mix on the contract.

Eurozone retail banks
Major retail and commercial banks across the 20 eurozone countries — SCT, SCT Inst and SDD scheme participants.
Non-eurozone EU banks
Retail and commercial banks in Denmark, Sweden, Czechia, Poland and other non-eurozone EU members participating in SEPA in EUR.
EEA banks
Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway — SEPA-participating banks reachable for EUR transfers.
UK banks (post-Brexit)
UK-domiciled SEPA scheme participants for EUR flows out of the UK; GBP equivalents route through Faster Payments.
Switzerland and Andorra
Non-EU SEPA participants reachable for EUR transfers under their respective scheme participation.
Microstate banks
Monaco, San Marino, Vatican City — SEPA scheme participants for EUR flows.

We deliberately don't publish a public list of named banks here — the SEPA participant set changes as institutions join, leave or change scheme participation. What the dashboard shows reflects current production reachability per merchant.

Platform features

What the SEPA payments integration ships with

The capability set behind the SEPA surface — built so an engineering, finance and ops reader can each find what they need quickly.

  • Unified SEPA API

    One REST contract for SCT, SCT Inst and SDD plus SDK coverage for the major server-side languages.

  • Mandate management

    SDD mandates as first-class API objects; create, amend, revoke, query state, attach metadata.

  • IBAN & BIC validation

    IBAN structure and check-digit validation, BIC lookup and reachability scoring before submission.

  • SCA orchestration

    Selective Strong Customer Authentication on the payer leg under PSD2 — frictionless where the rules allow.

  • R-message handling

    Normalised return / reject / refund event model; one handler covers every connected bank's R-messages.

  • Unified reconciliation

    SEPA settlement files, fees and R-messages normalise into the same ledger as card and APM settlements.

  • Signed webhooks

    Signed, replay-safe events covering instruction acceptance, scheme submission, settlement and returns.

  • Operator portal

    One dashboard for SEPA authorisations, mandates, returns and reconciliation across every connected bank.

Trust & compliance

Compliance posture for SEPA payments on the platform

Every SEPA instruction rides the same single audited environment. Merchants inherit the platform's posture rather than carrying separate certifications per bank.

PSD2 & SCA
Strong customer authentication on the payer leg where PSD2 requires it; selective challenges keep low-risk flows frictionless.
EBA Clearing & equivalent CSMs
Connected banks route through EBA Clearing's RT1 and STEP2-T (or equivalent CSM) per scheme — operationally invisible to the merchant API surface.
Mandate vault
SDD mandates stored and versioned in the platform vault; revocation, amendment and expiry events emitted as signed webhooks.
AML & sanctions screening
Payee, payer and beneficiary screening against current sanctions lists on every SCT and SCT Inst instruction.
Operational resilience
Redundant connectivity to multiple SEPA-scheme banks; an outage at one connected bank cascades to the next viable one inside the same request where the merchant's policy permits.

Start accepting SEPA

Bring SCT, SCT Inst and SDD under one integration.

A 30-minute SEPA review walks through the schemes relevant for your flows, the connected banks reachable from your region, settlement timing trade-offs, and a sandbox to test against before any commercial commitment.

Book a SEPA review Read the API docs

Frequently asked

Buyer questions about sepa payments through topropay

What buyers ask before they commit — covering schemes, settlement timing, UK specifics, mandates, returns and compliance.

  1. Q01

    What are SEPA payments and which schemes does topropay cover?

    SEPA payments is the umbrella name for euro-denominated payments under the Single Euro Payments Area schemes. topropay covers all three production schemes through one API: SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT, next-business-day push), SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst, under-10-second push, 24×7) and SEPA Direct Debit (SDD Core for consumers and SDD B2B for businesses).

  2. Q02

    How long is sepa payments time end to end?

    SEPA payments time depends on the scheme. SCT settles next business day after the cutoff. SCT Inst settles in under 10 seconds, 24×7×365. SDD settles on the requested due date after the pre-notification window. The API exposes the relevant scheme per request so the merchant chooses the settlement window per flow.

  3. Q03

    Do sepa payments uk flows still work after Brexit?

    Yes — sepa payments uk flows remain operational because the UK continues to participate in the SEPA schemes after Brexit (the UK remained a SEPA participant outside the EU). topropay routes EUR flows from the UK through SEPA-participating UK banks; GBP equivalents route through UK Faster Payments. The merchant integration is the same in both cases.

  4. Q04

    Can my business accept sepa payments through topropay without holding a euro account in every country?

    Yes. To accept sepa payments through topropay the merchant needs one euro-denominated settlement account that the platform can settle to; topropay handles the per-country SEPA scheme connectivity through its connected banking partners. The merchant does not need separate accounts per country to receive EUR.

  5. Q05

    Which banks that accept sepa payments are connected on the platform?

    The list of connected banks that accept sepa payments is exposed inside the merchant dashboard, scoped to the merchant's region and scheme needs. We avoid publishing a marketing page list because the participant set changes as banks join or leave the schemes; the dashboard reflects the live state with per-bank reachability, latency and return-code analytics.

  6. Q06

    Is SCT Inst available across every SEPA-zone bank?

    SCT Inst participation is broader every year and now covers the majority of payment volume in the eurozone, but it is not universal — some smaller institutions still only participate in SCT. topropay's routing engine checks scheme reachability per payee BIC before submission; instructions land on the best available scheme automatically, and the API surface stays the same.

  7. Q07

    How does the API handle SDD mandates?

    SDD mandates are first-class objects in the API. The merchant creates a mandate (with the signed UMR and creditor identifier), submits collections referencing the mandate, and receives signed webhooks for amendments, revocations and R-messages (reject, refund, return, refund request). Mandate state is queryable per merchant and per debtor at any time.

  8. Q08

    What happens when an SCT or SCT Inst payment returns?

    Returns and rejects propagate back through the connected bank as scheme-defined R-messages. topropay normalises them into a single webhook event type with the underlying scheme code preserved as metadata, so the merchant writes one return handler rather than per-bank logic.

  9. Q09

    Are there limits on the volume or value of sepa payments through the platform?

    SCT and SDD have no regulatory per-payment cap. SCT Inst is capped per payment at the EPC's current limit (€100k as of writing, expected to rise). Merchant-level volume thresholds are set at onboarding and can be raised as the merchant builds history; the dashboard surfaces current utilisation per scheme.

  10. Q10

    How does the platform handle a UK-domiciled merchant that needs both SEPA and Faster Payments?

    A UK-domiciled merchant gets both rails behind the same unified API: EUR flows route via SEPA-participating UK banks, GBP flows route via Faster Payments. Reconciliation rolls up under one ledger so finance doesn't need to merge a SEPA file with a Faster Payments file manually.

  11. Q11

    Can a merchant accept sepa payments alongside card and wallet acceptance through one integration?

    Yes — the orchestration layer treats SEPA as one of many connected rails. A merchant can accept sepa payments, card, wallet, BNPL and bank-rail flows through the same API surface, with one reconciliation feed across all of them.

  12. Q12

    What compliance posture do merchants inherit when accepting sepa payments through topropay?

    Merchants inherit the platform's PSD2 / SCA compliance posture, PCI DSS Level 1 for the broader environment, mandate-vault security for SDD, and sanctions screening on every instruction. The merchant integrates as a sub-merchant where appropriate and rides the platform's regulatory standing rather than carrying separate scheme certifications per bank.

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