EBA CLEARING and KIR S.A. establish interoperability for SEPA

EBA CLEARING and KIR S.A. (National Clearing House of Poland Co.) announced today their cooperation on establishing interoperability between KIR’s EuroELIXIR platform and the STEP2 SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) Service for the processing of SEPA payments. KIR will provide the users of its clearing systems with a link to the STEP2 platform, which will enable the Polish banking community to exchange SEPA payments with banks in 31 European countries. A Memorandum of Understanding reflecting the roles and objectives of this link between EuroElixir and STEP2 was signed by the two organisations in early January.

The link between the two platforms will be put in place for the start of SEPA on 28th January 2008. Financial institutions using this link will have the choice to either settle their obligations themselves or to appoint another bank as their settlement bank.

“The cooperation of KIR S.A. with EBA CLEARING in the area of SEPA payments will enable our users to send all their intra-European euro payments to the same platform, whether they are in the national format or compliant with the SEPA Schemes. The link between EuroELIXIR and STEP2 will make the migration to the new payment instruments very smooth for our banks. We are very pleased to offer them this efficient single-channel solution for their payments in SEPA,” said Tomasz Jonczyk, Director, KIR S.A. 

“EBA CLEARING looks forward to establishing interoperability between the clearing house of the Polish banking community and the STEP2 SEPA Credit Transfer Service. We welcome this latest joint step in our continued cooperation with KIR S.A. and are very pleased that the new link will expand the reach of STEP2 for all its participants throughout SEPA,” said José Beltran, Director, STEP2 Services, EBA CLEARING.

KIR S.A. has facilitated the usage of STEP2 Services in Poland since May 2005 when the company started to technically support the National Bank of Poland in providing entry point services to the Polish banks for the STEP2 Credeuro (XCT) Service. The interoperability between EuroELIXIR and the STEP2 SEPA Credit Transfer Service will take the cooperation between the two companies to a new level as it allows KIR S.A. users to benefit from EBA CLEARING’s position as a pan-European ACH (PE-ACH) for SEPA payments in 31 European countries. Conversely, the link supports the reach of STEP2 in Poland.

So far, EBA CLEARING has established links between STEP2 and 15 local platforms in 12 SEPA countries.