The RF Expert Group announced today the publication of a guide on the RF Creditor Reference, a global creditor reference standard approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 2009 and geared at facilitating automated payments reconciliation and full end-to-end straight-through payment processing.
The guide was presented at an industry session held during the pan-European payments conference EBAday. It outlines the benefits of the new global standard to a wider public and provides potential users with guidance on the integration of this structured creditor reference into their business processes: "The introduction of the globally standardized RF Creditor Reference will make fully automated payments reconciliation possible for small and large entrepreneurs across the world, both at domestic and at cross-border level," said Olli Kähkönen, Manager, Payments Infrastructure at Nordea, who conceived and promoted the new standard with his colleague Markku Ranta. "Our expert team is delighted to provide some guiding comments through our publication in order to assist in the implementation of the standard for the benefit of all parties involved."
The publication explains the composition and functioning of the RF Creditor Reference and includes detailed usage and implementation guidelines for Creditors, Debtors, banks, ERP and payment system vendors as well as for the migration of entire communities to this global standard. The RF Creditor Reference guide was compiled by representatives from banks as well as IT and ERP system vendors and users, which together formed the RF Expert Group.
The RF Creditor Reference is a structured creditor reference standard geared at optimally supporting users in carrying out an automated reconciliation process: it was designed to refer to all key remittance information in a structured manner and to allow for checks aimed at validating the correctness of the reference. For corporate customers issuing invoices, the reconciliation of invoice and related payment is currently in many cases still an inefficient and costly exercise as it often requires considerable manual intervention. In a great number of countries as well as in the cross-border space, there has so far not been any standardized creditor reference allowing for an automated reconciliation process. The RF Creditor Reference approved as ISO Standard 11649 was delivered in order to close this gap and further facilitate full end-to-end straight-through payment processing.
The RF Creditor Reference guide can be downloaded as a PDF document at nordea.fi/RF.