What has hitherto only applied within Austria, is henceforth going to be possible in the entire SEPA payment area as well. As of February 1, the requirement to enter a BIC code will be waived, IBAN alone will be sufficient. According to the EU's SEPA migration directive, this applies to all SEPA money transfers and SEPA direct debits. For customers of Erste Bank und Sparkassen the technical changeover takes place on January 20 already. From that date onward, the field for entering the BIC code for such transactions will no longer be displayed on online banking pages. For SEPA payment orders via paper payment slips, the respective field will no longer need to be completed either.
 

What is SEPA?

SEPA is short for Single Euro Payments Area and refers to the creation of a single, uniform payment system in the EU. 34 countries are currently participating in the project, namely all countries of the EU-28, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, Norway and Switzerland.