New payment standard ISO 20022 for transactions in national currency

Dear customers!

Since April 01, 2023 Credit Agricole Bank transitions to processing cashless transfers in the national currency in compliance with the international standard for message exchange ISO 20022 (hereinafter, ISO 20022) via next generation system of electronic payments of the National Bank  (hereinafter, SEP 4.0).

Adoption of the ISO 20022 international standard methodology and transition to SEP 4.0 is aimed at offering new opportunities for the banks and business, using the unified standard of data exchange and integrating the national payment system with the international one, increasing the security of payments. The following changes will be implemented at Credit Agricole Bank (key changes are listed below, more details will follow):

• processing and carrying out payments in the national currency, received by the remote service systems that comply with the rules for automatic processing during weekends from 9:00 to 17:00;
• changing the forms of settlement documents (payment order, memorial order, payment request, payment request-order) to payment instruction;
• emergence of new optional participants of payment: initiator, actual payer, actual recipient;
• new types of identification of payment participants;
• changing the structure of the payment instruction (new rules for filling in fields, mandatory parameters, etc.);
• increasing the size of the purpose of payment field to 420 characters (instead of 160);
• increasing the size of the document number field to 35 characters (instead of 10);
• printed forms of payment documents have been updated;
• changes in import files (for customers that import payments into the remote service system) ;
• the possibility of performing new types of operations (for example, request for a credit transfer, request for a refund, etc.).

Please note that in connection with the transition to the new standard on March 31, 2023, a limited mode of service provision and transaction and transfer processing may apply, about which the bank will inform additionally in the news on its website.

All rejected transfers require repeated creation on April 01, 2023 in compliance with ISO 20022 requirements.

In case of questions regarding payments of private individuals, please address them to the contact center:

0 800 30 5555 (for calls on the territory of Ukraine),

+38 044 495 22 77 (for calls from overseas).

In case of questions regarding payments in remote service systems for business customers, you can always contact the employees of our contact center on a separate support line for business customers:

0 800 300 004 (for calls on the territory of Ukraine),

+38 044 363 16 33 (for calls from overseas).

[1] Additional information about the event can be found on the NBU website at the link 

[1] Details on changes in import file formats can be found at the.link. Please note that the current import file formats will remain operational after April 1, 2023 and will allow payment instructions with the above “Recipient Code” identifiers to be uploaded to the system. Also, current import file formats will not support uploading of payment instructions with transfer participants Actual Recipient and Actual Payer.