EPC QR code
Guidelines on QR codes for credit transfer
The European Payments Council (EPC) Quick Response (QR) code is a technical standard by the European Payments Council. It uses a QR code containing all the necessary information for initiating a SEPA credit transfer (SCT). It is commonly used on invoices and payment requests in the countries that support it (Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Italy).
The EPC guidelines are available from the EPC itself. Another version has also been published by the Federation of Finnish Finance Services (FFI).
01Sample content of QR Code
| Service Tag: | BCD |
| Version: | 001 |
| Character set: | 1 |
| Identification: | SCT |
| BIC: | BPOTBEB1 |
| Name: | Red Cross |
| IBAN: | BE72000000001616 |
| Amount: | EUR1 |
| Reason (4 chars max): | CHAR |
| Ref of invoice: | Empty line or REFINVOICE |
| Or text: | Urgency fund or Empty line |
| Information: | Sample EPC QR code |
So the QR string could be
BCD 001 1 SCT BPOTBEB1 Red Cross BE72000000001616 EUR1 CHAR Urgency fund Sample EPC QR code
02History
In 2012, the Austrian payment facilitator STUZZA (now part of PSA Payment Services Austria) defined the content of a QR code that could be used to initiate money transfers within the Single Euro Payments Area.
In February 2013, the European Payments Council (EPC) published the document 'Quick Response Code: Guidelines to Enable Data Capture for the Initiation of a Credit Transfer'.
These guidelines were quickly adopted by the Austrian banks. These QR code can be recognised thanks to the words "Zahlen mit Code" (Pay with Code) on the right.
These guidelines were later on used in Finland in 2015, Germany in 2015 and the Netherlands in 2016.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “EPC QR code”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Sample EPC QR code.png by Cedric Neve, Public domain
- Zahlen mit Code - QR code sample.png by Cedric Neve, CC BY-SA 4.0
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