November 2026 is the deadline for migrating all file formats exchanged with your bank within the SEPA zone to XML V9.
As a reminder: When SEPA opened on January 28, 2008, the format for transfers followed the XML V2 standard. This version 2 quickly revealed its limitations, which were addressed by version V3, gradually adopted as a de facto standard when the XML format became mandatory for issuing a SEPA transfer in February 2014.
More specifically, between these 2 versions, the order of some tags has been revised, the size of some tags has been enlarged, tags have been added, modified, made mandatory, deleted, the list of codes has been enriched, etc.
Why a new XML version V9?
The adoption of XML has awakened new needs that V3 cannot fully meet, such as VoP (beneficiary verification) and IP ( instant transfer).
Just like between V2 and V3, V9 brings evolutions, modifications, additions and deletions of tags and codes.
The most time-consuming change for application administrators concerns address structuring. Indeed, the rise in fraud has prompted the EPC (European Payments Council) to find a way to screen recipient details, and particularly their addresses, more effectively. Therefore, XML V9 requires addresses to be entered within specific tags.
Until then, banks read the freely entered address in one, two, or three tags.<AdrLine> while screenshotting the country in the tag<Ctry> .
In the XML V9 version, the address must be broken down (structured) into the following 14 tags:
· Department
· Sub Department
· Street Name
· Building Number
· Building Name
· Floor
· Post Box
· Room
· Post Code
· Town Name
· Town Location Name
· District Name
· Country Sub Division
· Country
Only the "Country" and "Town Name" tags are mandatory; feeding other tags is strongly recommended, particularly the "Post Code", "Street Name" and "Building Number" tags.
Some tags are not used in Europe and depend on local practices, such as the "Country Sub Division" tag, which is mandatory in Japan and the USA.
To smoothly meet the November 2026 deadline, it is possible in the SEPA zone to structure addresses using a "hybrid" format that closely resembles the current structure: simply extract the tag<AdrLine> The city name should be displayed in the "Town Name" tag, while leaving the rest of the address in its current format. This step is only temporary and merely postpones the address structuring work that regulations will undoubtedly require in the coming years.
Precision :
The term "XML v9 migration" is incorrectly used when it would have been more accurate to state that the 2019 version was discontinued for each of the 3 file types affected by this migration (and which do not have the same version…!):
• SCT transfers are being migrated to version 9: pain.001.001.09
• SDD direct debits are being migrated to version 8: pain.008.001.08
• Order submission statuses are being migrated to version 10: pain.002.001.10
All these processes can be quickly implemented in NEOFI.
To help companies migrate smoothly, NEOFI has designed the Ready for XMLv9 in which all the necessary processing is already pre-configured and can make the necessary changes without affecting your applications or your banks.
