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The European Payments Council (EPC) has  payments companies to take part in a pilot for the SEPA Payment Account Access (SPAA) scheme, which aims to boost market engagement and a smooth transition to compliance for Europe’s payment service providers. 

The SPAA scheme has been created to govern the rules, practices and standards that enable the exchange of payment account data and facilitating payment transactions between banks and third-party providers (TPPs) in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).

It focuses on message functionalities and is agnostic to specific payment means and instruments, offering a framework for transmitting information that is related to payment accounts and transactions.

The pilot scheme, due to begin in September, is aimed at asset holders such as account servicing payment service providers (ASPSPs), which are usually banks and asset brokers, including payment initiation service providers (PISPs) and account information service providers (AISPs). 

The EPC said that its goal is to promote “open payments” in the EU, fostering value creation, while also ensuring fair distribution of value and risk among participants.

The industry group plans to carry out the pilot process in two stages. The first, beginning September, will be limited in scope, requiring minimal budget from participants. This will be followed by a more comprehensive trial, with a broader scope and dedicated budget, sometime in 2025.

Andrei Cazacu, EU public policy lead of open banking platform TrueLayer, welcomed the announcement of the pilot. 

“Back in January, TrueLayer was the first company to join SPAA, of course we're going to be a part of the pilot,” he told 91����ԭ��. “We're keen to keep momentum going and eventually get to roll out the features our customers are most excited about, such as Dynamic Recurring Payments.”

Two-stage pilot

According to the EPC, the primary objectives of the initial “tactical” pilot are to demonstrate progress and momentum in the SPAA scheme to the market, and gain insights on transitioning compliance for application programming interfaces (APIs) to the SPAA from the EU’s revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2). 

Further, it wants to encourage engagement and collaboration among stakeholders, provide a preliminary proof of concept, and prepare for the extended “strategic” pilot next year.

To facilitate participation, the SPAA Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG), which includes both the banks and fintechs, has established several key principles. 

Participation in the first pilot does not require being an existing SPAA scheme participant, for example, and stakeholders will also be able to choose which functionalities they wish to implement. 

Potential participants have meanwhile been advised to not charge SPAA scheme default fees, but they may agree on terms among themselves. 

The scope of the smaller pilot includes functionalities that can be implemented based on version 1.0 of the OpenFinance API Framework, such as one-off payments with payment guarantee, a list of current accounts and a list of current account transactions. 

Additionally, the EPC has said that asset holders may opt to implement other premium functionalities covered in version 1.1 of the SPAA scheme rulebook, such as dynamic recurring payments.