Yhtenäisen euromaksualueen SEPA:n (Single Euro Payments Area) tilisiirroissa ja suoraveloituksessa käytettävissä olevasta merkkivalikoimasta käytiin keväällä 2016 julkista keskustelua. Siihen liittyen Euroopan maksuneuvosto (EPC – European Payments Council) käsitteli Saksan pankkien ehdotusta, jonka mukaan tilisiirtojen ja suoraveloituksen sekä pankkien välisessä että asiakkaan ja pankin välisessä käsittelyssä tulisi sallia laajennetun latinalaisen kirjaimiston merkit ja käyttää UTF-8-koodausta. Tämä merkitsee, että pankkien järjestelmiltä vaadittaisiin vähimmäistasona entistä laajemman merkkivalikoiman käsittelyä. EPC:n Scheme Evolution and Maintenance Working Group SEMWG suositti että ehdotusta ei hyväksyttäisi. EPC julkaisi asiasta avoimet kannanottopyynnöt, joihin Kotoistus lähetti Saksan ehdotusta puoltavan vastauksen 4.7.2016:
Customers in SEPA countries, whether companies or private persons, should be able to spell their name and address correctly according to national practice even when they include letters outside the Basic Latin character set and thus require use of Unicode UTF-8. This must be possible even in SEPA as the distinction between domestic and cross-border is absent. Except a question of equality, this is important for reliable identification of the customer and for giving the correct address, and in order to match with their official identity and identification documents.
As a consumer dealing with a company, a SEPA customer in Finland has a legal right to use and receive the correctly spelled name and address of the company without risk of confusion.
In Finland, the languages that residents have the right to use with authorities – Finnish, Swedish and Northern, Inari and Skolt Sami – commonly include characters outside the Basic Latin character set. Not being able to use their proper names and addresses in SEPA would be unacceptable and lack of respect for the customers’ identity.
SEPA needs to utilize UTF-8 encoding covering all the currently used characters of the national languages and selected minority languages of Europe, and for other than Latin script the required transliteration scheme. The current EPC217-08 SEPA Conversion Table does not accept all characters required by Sami languages to be kept, and should thus be revised.
For your information: Finland has defined a Unicode subset suitable for this purpose. (The subset is required for easy recognisability and avoidance of confusables.) Although the primary user is the Finnish Population Register, this work is available for use for any Pan-European purpose, including SEPA.
Kannanottopyynnöt on julkaistu SEPA:n sivuilla:
EPC011-16 SEPA Credit Transfer Rulebook Change Request Consultation Document (5.4.2016)
EPC012-16 SEPA Direct Debit Core Rulebook Change Request Consultation Document (5.4.2016)
EPC013-16 SEPA Direct Debit Business to Business Rulebook Change Request Consultation Document (5.4.2016)