Yes. Following the publication of Regulation (EU) No 260/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council, of 14 March 2012 (amended by Regulation (EU) No 248/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council, of 26 February 2014), technical and business requirements for credit transfers and direct debits in euro were established.

Therefore, in countries across the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) (i.e. in EU Member States, Andorra, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Norway, San Marino, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Vatican), payment service users may make and receive credit transfers in euro via a single payment account, subject to the same rules and obligations as in Portugal. This means that, as regards execution times, value dates, costs, fees and information needed to initiate credit transfers, the execution of a credit transfer between accounts domiciled in Portugal is similar to that of a credit transfers between, for instance, an account in Portugal and an account domiciled in France.

Currently, only technical and business standards of SEPA credit transfer and SEPA direct debit schemes established by the European Payments Council in its Rulebooks and implementation guidelines meet the conditions specified in the aforementioned Regulation. These schemes are based on the ISO 20022 XML standards and aim for the fully automated processing of payments between the payer’s payment service provider and the payee’s payment service provider (end-to-end straight-through processing).