SEPA Address Rules After the November 2026 Deadline Was Postponed

Unstructured addresses will still be accepted in SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) payment schemes after 15 November 2026. The European Payments Council (EPC) withdrew that end date, and its board will decide by February 2027 whether to set a new one. Banks may ask for more, so check which address fields your payment channel requires before the next run.

Key points

• The EPC withdrew its 15 November 2026 cut-off for unstructured addresses; no new date exists.
• Hybrid and structured addresses are both valid; the EPC still recommends fully structured where possible.
• Ask your bank which address fields your channel requires, as its rules may go further.

What happened to the 15 November deadline?

The EPC's Payment Scheme Management Board met on 9 September 2026 and decided to delay the planned end of unstructured addresses, set for 15 November 2026. The delay applies to all five EPC payment scheme rulebooks, which cover credit transfers, instant credit transfers and direct debits. Version 1.2 of the 2025 rulebooks and version 2.2 of the EPC address guidance took effect on 30 September 2026 with the date removed. Unstructured addresses therefore remain valid for now. The EPC still urges participants to keep migrating, ideally straight to fully structured addresses.

On 29 October 2026 the EPC announced that it was still not naming a new end date and would settle the question by February 2027. Read that as a decision point, not a cut-off: it says when a date will be chosen, not when unstructured addresses stop working. The end date itself, once chosen, will fall after that decision. Until then the EPC's rules impose no deadline.

What do the three address formats look like?

Unstructured

An unstructured address puts everything into free-text lines. Our fictional beneficiary becomes two lines, “21 Example Lane” and “1000 Brussels”, with country code BE in the optional country field. It is easy to type, but software cannot reliably tell where the street ends and the town begins. That makes screening harder, which is part of the EPC's case for change.

Hybrid

A hybrid address splits off the parts a bank needs to route and screen a payment and leaves the rest as text. Here Brussels goes in the town field, BE in the country field and, where offered, 1000 in a postcode field. “21 Example Lane” stays in one address line. Town and country are mandatory, and the address lines (two at most, 70 characters each) must not repeat anything held in a dedicated field. The EPC has allowed hybrid addresses since 5 October 2025.

One beneficiary address in three SEPA formats

The same fictional beneficiary address, 21 Example Lane, 1000 Brussels, Belgium, entered as free-text lines, as a mix of fields and text, and in fully separate fields.

Checked on 10 November 2026 against EPC guidance document EPC153-22 v2.2. Fictional address and an illustration of fields only, not a sample payment file. Field names and limits vary by bank file specification. Review date to be updated after the EPC's next decision on the end date.

Structured

A structured address gives every component its own field, and no free-text address line is allowed. For the same beneficiary that means street name “Example Lane”, building number “21”, postcode 1000, town Brussels and country BE. Under the EPC guidance only town and country are mandatory, and the postcode is optional. The real work sits in your data: a supplier record that keeps “21 Example Lane” in one box must be split before it can fill separate street and number fields.

What should a finance team change now?

Single invoice

Begin with the payment screen or form your bank supplies, not with the rulebook. If it has separate boxes for street, postcode, town and country, fill each one: structured entries keep working however the rules tighten. If there is only a free-text box, look for a notice from the bank about that channel. Copy the town and country from the supplier's invoice so they match the document. Where the bank is silent, an unstructured address is still within the EPC rules, but your bank's own channel decides what it will take today.

Batch payment file

Treat this as a data clean-up before it is a formatting change.

1. Map the source fields. Find out how your ERP (enterprise resource planning) or accounting system stores each supplier address, then decide which field feeds street, building number, postcode, town and country. A single free-text address line is usually the weak spot.
2. Validate one test file. Build a small file with suppliers from several countries, including a few awkward addresses such as long street names or building names. Run it through the bank's test channel or validator, if it offers one, and read the results before the live run.
3. Record the exceptions. Note each supplier whose address cannot be split cleanly, with the reason and a named owner, so the same cases are not rediscovered at every payment run.

What if my bank asks for structured data?

Follow the bank. The EPC sets the baseline that scheme participants must accept, but each bank decides what its own online banking, file channel or ERP connection requires. Nordea's corporate guidance, last updated on 28 September 2026, shows how that can look: unstructured addresses are still processed for now, yet the bank strongly recommends fully structured ones and has not yet fixed a date of its own. A bank's timetable can therefore differ from the EPC's, so a payer should read both.

Ask your bank three things:

• File format. Which file format and message version does our channel accept, and are hybrid addresses allowed there as well as fully structured ones?
• Required fields. Which address elements must be filled for each payment type and for each destination country we pay?
• Migration dates. Do you plan to reject unstructured addresses, from which date, and how will you tell us in writing?