EBA Moves to Streamline SEPA Reporting Across the EU

The European Banking Authority has issued a new Decision designed to simplify how national authorities report SEPA data to EU institutions, marking a practical but important step in the implementation of the bloc’s instant payments regime. Published on 10 April 2026, the measure creates a single reporting channel from National Competent Authorities, or NCAs, to the EBA, which will then transmit the information to the European Commission. The move is intended to reduce duplication, improve data quality and strengthen supervisory consistency across the European Union.

At its core, the Decision addresses the second stage of the SEPA reporting chain. Payment Service Providers, or PSPs, are already required under the SEPA Regulation to provide annual data to their competent authorities on charges for credit transfers, instant credit transfers and payment accounts, as well as the proportion of transactions rejected because of EU sanctions screening. The EBA’s new Decision does not change those underlying obligations for firms. Instead, it standardises how NCAs pass that information onwards to the EBA and the Commission.

This is significant because the European Commission is relying on this data to monitor whether consumers and businesses are actually benefiting from the EU’s push for faster and cheaper euro payments. In particular, the reporting framework supports oversight of one of the most commercially sensitive goals of the instant payments reforms, namely that instant credit transfers should be widely available and should not cost more than standard credit transfers. Better harmonised reporting should make that assessment easier and more reliable.

The Decision also has an operational benefit for supervisors. Where NCAs already hold some of the required information, they will be responsible for ensuring that it is accurate and complete without having to collect it again from PSPs. That should help avoid unnecessary re-reporting and reduce administrative friction, especially as payment reporting obligations continue to expand across the EU regulatory framework.

Another notable point is that the Decision amends the Annex to the EBA’s EUCLID Decision so that the new reporting requirement is formally incorporated into the authority’s existing supervisory data infrastructure. That matters because EUCLID is the EBA’s core platform for regulatory data collection and access, and folding SEPA reporting into that architecture points to a broader trend of integrating payments data more tightly into EU supervisory systems.

From a regulatory perspective, this is best viewed as a regulatory update rather than headline-breaking news. It does not introduce fresh obligations for PSPs, but it does refine the mechanics of supervisory reporting in a way that supports the EU’s wider instant payments agenda. For banks, payment institutions and compliance teams, the message is that the supervisory framework around SEPA and instant payments is becoming more centralised, more structured and more data driven.

The legal basis underlines that point. Article 15(3) of the SEPA Regulation sets out the annual reporting obligations for PSPs, while Article 15(4) requires competent authorities to provide the reported information to both the Commission and the EBA, along with data on the volume and value of euro instant credit transfers. The new EBA Decision effectively organises how that obligation will work in practice, with immediate effect.

In strategic terms, the Decision shows the EBA continuing to position itself as a central data hub for EU financial supervision. While technical on the surface, it supports a broader policy objective: giving the Commission and the EBA cleaner, more comparable evidence on pricing, sanctions-related rejections and instant payments uptake across the single market. That will matter as the EU assesses whether the SEPA framework is delivering on access, resilience and competition in retail payments.

Read the press release here.