The European Payments Council has decided to postpone setting a new end date for the unstructured address format in SEPA payments, in a decision taken by its Payment Scheme Management Board on 29 October 2026 and announced the following day.
The decision follows the EPC’s announcement on 10 September 2026 that it would delay the end date it had originally planned across all 5 of its payment scheme rulebooks. Since then, the EPC has been monitoring how unstructured, structured and hybrid address formats are being used in scheme transactions, and it has based its latest decision on that monitoring and on wider market and payment industry developments.
The direction of travel has not changed
The EPC has been clear that the delay does not alter its commitment to structured addresses. Its schemes already support both hybrid and structured formats, and it continues to recommend that payment service providers and their customers move directly from unstructured to fully structured addresses wherever possible, because doing so supports more efficient payment processing, stronger compliance and sanctions screening, improved reconciliation and higher levels of straight through processing.
The Payment Scheme Management Board is therefore strongly recommending that all scheme participants continue their migration efforts and maintain their current implementation plans, and it is encouraging them to step up the support and information they give customers as they make the transition.
Why this matters for banks
Swift has taken a similar path for cross border payments, deferring its structured address requirement while the timing remains under consultation, and it has been clear that the move away from unstructured addresses is being rescheduled rather than abandoned. With structured and hybrid addresses already flowing across both SEPA and the Swift network, there is nothing to stop a bank beginning or continuing its remediation work today, and the banks that do so will see the benefits the EPC describes long before any new deadline is set.
For most banks the harder part of the job is not the message format itself but the address data held across core systems, customer records and payment channels, which takes time to cleanse and keep consistent. Treating the postponement as permission to pause simply pushes that work closer to whatever date is eventually agreed, leaving less room to get it right.
How Aqua Global can help
Aquila is an ISO 20022 native financial messaging, payments processing and reconciliation platform that sits alongside a bank’s existing core banking system, supporting SEPA and SEPA Instant as well as Swift MT and MX among a wide range of payment rails. If you would like to talk about how Aquila can help you keep your address data moving in the right direction, our team would be very happy to hear from you.
You can read the European Payments Council’s full announcement on its website. https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/news-insights/news/epc-defers-setting-new-end-date-unstructured-address-format-until-february-2027
About Aqua Global
For over 43 years, Aqua Global has been delivering a powerful suite of financial messaging and transaction automation solutions built for payments, treasury and securities processing. Trusted by leading banks in more than 23 countries, our Aquila orchestration and integration framework provides unmatched performance, control and scalability. The modular suite covers payments, securities processing, reconciliations, matching and reporting, helping financial institutions simplify complexity, reduce operational risk and accelerate change. Designed for the banks of today, with tomorrow in mind, Aqua Global enables confident transformation across the entire transaction lifecycle.
