Five Change Requests Will Reshape SEPA Instant Payments in November 2027

The European Payments Council's public consultation on five proposed SCT Inst rulebook changes closes June 11, 2026. The proposals cover name field expansion from 70 to 140 characters, partial fraud recall, beneficiary-initiated repayment, ISO 20022 version alignment, and extended recall timelines. All approved changes take effect November 2027.

The European Payments Council opened public consultation document EPC009-26 on March 13, 2026. The consultation covers five change requests to the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer scheme rulebook. Stakeholders can submit responses by June 11, 2026 at 17:00 CET. Approved changes will be published in November 2026. Mandatory implementation follows in November 2027.

The most operationally significant proposal doubles the character limit for originator and beneficiary name fields from 70 to 140 characters. Long names of legal entities with complex corporate structures are frequently truncated under the current 70-character constraint. Extending the field aligns the instant scheme with the full ISO 20022 name field capacity.

Three proposals address post-transaction processes. The first introduces partial fund recovery by the beneficiary PSP in fraud-related recall scenarios, replacing the current all-or-nothing mechanism. A second creates a formal beneficiary-initiated repayment procedure, standardizing a process that currently varies between PSPs. The third extends the recall deadline for transactions flagged as duplicates or technical errors.

The fifth change request migrates the SCT Inst scheme to the latest ISO 20022 maintenance release. This alignment supports the November 2026 structured address deadline under SWIFT SR2026. PSPs that have not yet reviewed the consultation document should assess the five proposals before the June 11 submission deadline.