GLOBAL PAYMENTS KNOWLEDGEISO 20022 / SWIFT / SEPA / MT / MX
PAYMENTSSIGNAL

The interactive academy for the standards, messages, and rails that move money.

PROGRESS
DRILL · CLEARING VERSUS SETTLEMENT

Put SEPA Credit Transfer back in order

These steps are shuffled. Put them back into the order the payment actually takes.

In SEPA Credit Transfer, what happens first, and what follows?

Step 1 of 1

THE DRILL AS TEXT

  1. In SEPA Credit Transfer, what happens first, and what follows?
    • The debtor initiates the transfer — The customer instructs their bank to pay. A corporate typically sends a pain.001 file; a retail customer uses a banking channel that creates the same instruction internally.
    • Bank Alfa validates the instruction — The debtor agent checks the format, the IBAN, available funds, and runs compliance screening before accepting the instruction for execution.
    • The debtor's account is debited — Once accepted, Bank Alfa books the debit. The customer's money has left their account, but no money has yet moved between banks.
    • Bank Alfa submits the interbank transfer — The debtor agent converts the customer instruction into an interbank pacs.008 and submits it to the clearing and settlement mechanism.
    • The CSM calculates positions — The CSM validates the message and includes it in a clearing cycle. Each participant's obligations are calculated — this creates who-owes-whom, not yet a movement of money.
    • Positions settle in central bank money — The calculated positions settle across the banks' settlement accounts at the central bank. Only now has money finally moved between Bank Alfa and Nordbank.

This drill is built from Clearing versus settlement — it rearranges material written and sourced on that page rather than asserting anything new, so every claim in it is checkable there.