The extensions of the standards

SEPAmail is fundamentally an interbank standards, or more precisely an inter-participant standards.

However, as the objective is to provide services to the customers of these particpants, this standards intends to go beyond the interbank context:

• the formats of data transmitted by "business" applications may absolutely be geenrated by the information systems of the customer companies
• the standards of the interbank messaging service may also be used for relationships with customers.

Existing channels that may be used for SEPAmail applications

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• unattended machines are primarily representing a validation channel for physical persons. This channel provides an obvious benefit of necessarily providing a very simple ergonomy which can be reached by any individual, especially those without any access to Internet
• remote banking appears to be a key channel for individuals and companies for unit or limited volumes, both for initialisation and for validation
• the EDI connection based on Swiftnet, EBICS or another protocol is the preferred link for large volumes flows (bills, invoices, payslips) for initialisation purposes. It is also the preferred link for inter companies flows both for initialisation and for validation. With this channel, the files may use the SEPAmail formats of data or proprietary formats initially agreed with the bank, the bank being responsible of the translation into the SEPAmail format.
• branches or call centers are listed as a reminder but not seem to be predicted to a bright future except for very specific niches because costs of management and authentication will be high.

SEPAmail channel for companies

It is possible to use the standards of the SEPAmail messaging service for a direct connection of EDI type in transactionnal mode. Such an approach requires the use of SEPAmail data format.

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It is a decision of the company's bank to propose such a channel with possible options: SMTP and/or Webservice. The implementation of this channel might be useful in order to smooth flows by avoiding the "batch" mode of the EDI or when looking for the immediacy of initialisations.

The GEMME pilot with SFR has tested this type of implementation.

SEPAmail channel for smartphones

The SEPAmail standards has also been used in an application for individuals: the RUBIS software for Android.

By using in addition the SAPPHIRE authentication protocol, this software could implement the synergies between the messages of the "payment.activation" family and of the "secure" family.

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The two proposed extensions allow to factorize studies and infrastructure that are used to implement interbank flows.