EBA Clearing and Swift announced today that the revamped version of the EURO1/Step1 Directory will be launched on 21st October 2013.
Over the past few months, EBA CLEARING has significantly enhanced the Directory in terms of functionality and usability in close co-operation with SWIFT's SWIFTRef team and a working group composed of EURO1/STEP1 Participants.
The revamped Directory will make it more convenient for users to update, modify and search for listed data. In order to provide the whole EURO1/STEP1 community with a direct and easy access to the Directory, the Directory file will also become available for download from the EBA CLEARING website. In addition, the quality of the data has been further improved following a review and reinforcement of the data submission and validation procedures. Testing will take place in September 2013 together with EURO1/STEP1 Participants and Sub-Participants.
"The close collaboration between EBA CLEARING and the SWIFTRef team has made this project a true success," said Patrik Neutjens, Head of Reference Data - SWIFTRef at SWIFT. "The valuable enhancements to the EURO1/STEP1 Directory will benefit the payments industry as a whole and, in particular, our mutual clients - which was the real driver behind the project. The initiative confirms also SWIFTRef as a global utility for payments reference data."
"We are very happy to offer to our users a state-of-the-art directory service, which they can conveniently access via SWIFTRef or via the EBA CLEARING website", said Alan Taylor, Director, EURO1/STEP1 Services at EBA CLEARING. "The enhanced usability will make it easier for our customers to fully reap the benefits of the EURO1/STEP1 Directory, which helps them to route their payments in a more liquidity-saving and costeffective manner."
The original EURO1/STEP1 Directory went live in April 2009 to support EURO1/STEP1 Participants in routing payments to third party banks that are clients of EURO1/STEP1 Banks. The Directory allows the originator banks to identify the EURO1 or STEP1 Banks through which the beneficiary banks can be reached. Today, the EURO1/STEP1 Directory lists more than 18,000 reachable banks in addition to over 8,000 participant BICs. Access to the EURO1/STEP1 Directory is open only for participants and sub-participants in the EURO1/STEP1 Services. The access and usage is free of charge for the participating banks.