OREANDA-NEWS. December 15, 2014. At a meeting today of the Estonian Payment Environment Forum in Eesti Pank, the central bank, the Estonian Banking Association, the Ministry of Finance and market participants decided to postpone the deadline for the changeover to the Single Euro Payments Area, SEPA, for companies making bulk payments.

This will give companies an extra year to make their accounting systems compatible with the new requirements. Companies that do not make the necessary upgrades will have to enter payments one by one through their bank once the changeover period is over.

On 1 February this year the pan-European payment conditions were adopted in Estonia and a changeover period running up to 1 February 2015 was allowed for the necessary changes to be made. The new standards are now used by 53% of bank clients, which between them make about half of all payments.

“While a majority of companies have already changed over successfully to the new standards, the banks still have many clients sending bulk payments who will need more time to finish making the changes. At the payment environment forum today we decided to extend the changeover period by one year, so all companies and institutions will have to start using the new standards for payments by 1 February 2016 at the latest. It will not be possible to extend the changeover period any further and we are insisting to all businesses that all the necessary changes must be made this year for certain”, said Madis Muller, Deputy Governor of Eesti Pank.

The changes mainly affect large companies, which send bulk payments to their bank and must upgrade their accounting systems to use the new ISO 20022 XML standard. Ten of the banks operating in Estonia offer a service for bulk payments. There are 6599 clients who make bulk payments, of whom 3113 use the old format and 3486 the new.

The banks made all the necessary changes for private individual clients themselves and the old domestic bank account numbers were automatically converted into the IBAN, or International Bank Account Number. When the changeover period ends, private clients will only be able to use the IBAN, so from February 2016 it will no longer be possible to make payments using the old domestic account numbers.