Germany's central bank is working with EBA Clearing to build a new XML-based infrastructure for clearing debit card transactions for the country's financial institutions.
Unveiling their plans at Sibos in Boston this week, the pair say that they will provide full reach to the German banking community for card clearing based on the Girocard scheme.
The infrastructure is based on the pan European Sepa card clearing framework developed by the Berlin Group, the collection of major card industry players from across Europe working to create standardisation on the continent.
Deutsche Bundesbank and EBA Clearing will enable their user banks to re-use the interfaces and internal systems they have put in place for Sepa Direct Debits for the processing and clearing of pre-authorised card transactions.
They say that by introducing XML-based card clearing services, banks will be able to discontinue legacy processing channels that are already obsolete for credit transfers and direct debits since the migration to Sepa instruments and channels.
Deutsche Bundesbank and EBA Clearing have been laying the foundations for the new infrastructure over the last year and expect banks to migrate in April.
Jochen Metzger, head, department, payments and settlement systems, Deutsche Bundesbank, says: "The implementation of XML-based card clearing infrastructure enables the German banks to leverage their Sepa investments: it allows them to migrate their card payments to state-of-the-art processing systems based on pan-European standards."