🇪🇺 SEPA: the 15 November 2026 structured-address deadline

Who is affected

Anyone sending SEPA credit transfers (pain.001) or direct debits (pain.008) that carry a postal address for the payer or the payee. If your files carry no address at all, nothing changes for you. Note this is the SEPA date — do not confuse it with the SWIFT CBPR+ migration, which concerns interbank pacs.* messages on a different rail.

The timeline, phase by phase

1. 15 November 2026Anyone sending SEPA payments with an address

   An address on the payer (Dbtr) or payee (Cdtr) must be structured (TwnNm + Ctry, no AdrLine) or hybrid (TwnNm + Ctry + at most 2 AdrLine of ≤ 70 chars). Free-text-only addresses are rejected.

What happens if you are not ready

A payment whose execution date falls on or after 15 November 2026 and which carries an unstructured (free-text-only) address will be rejected by the bank. Before that date the same file is only a warning — which is exactly why you can, and should, fix it now.

Your checklist

1. 1Find out whether your files carry addresses at all. If they do not, you are already compliant — the rule only bites when an address is present.
2. 2For each address, supply the town name (TwnNm) and country (Ctry). The town name is the discriminator: a country code on its own is NOT enough.
3. 3Either drop the free-text lines entirely (fully structured), or keep at most two of ≤ 70 characters (hybrid). More than two is invalid.
4. 4Apply this to the payer (Dbtr) and the payee (Cdtr). The guidance does not extend it to ultimate parties, the initiating party or the agents.
5. 5Test with an execution date after 15 November 2026 — that date inside the file is what triggers the rule, not the day you run the test.

Prove your file is ready

Check a real file against the rules that apply on the day. Free, no account, and nothing leaves your browser.

Other deadlines