About us

We are The Berlin Group

The ‘Berlin Group’ is a pan-European payments interoperability standards and harmonisation initiative with the primary objective of defining open and common scheme- and processor-independent standards in the interbanking domain between Creditor Bank (Acquirer) and Debtor Bank (Issuer), complementing the work carried out by e.g. the European Payments Council. As such, the Berlin Group has been established as a pure technical standardisation body, focusing on detailed technical and organisational requirements to achieve this primary objective.

est.

2004

More than 2 decades of expertise

26 +

Major Players from EU

High level of competence

The Berlin Group first met in Berlin, hence its name, in October 2004 and currently has participation of 26 major players in the payments industry from 10 different euro-zone countries and from the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, Serbia and Switzerland, together representing more than 25 billion card-originated transactions annually within the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). The participants are banks (ASPSPs), banking associations, payment associations, national and international payment schemes, and interbank processors working in SEPA.

Years of experience

Major players in the payments industry

Different countries taking part

>20

Card-originated transactions annually within the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA)

>30 billion

The Berlin Group Initiative

The early initiators of the Berlin Group initiative already shared the original ambition and vision of the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission (EC) and the European Payments Council (EPC) on SEPA payments. In their view, this vision would be best reached by capitalising on and preserving the high levels of efficiency, brand awareness, security, convenience and ease of use already achieved in already existing national schemes. In general, the majority of payment transactions already take place at a national level, where national efficiencies in payment schemes and infrastructures are proven and can be leveraged to migrate towards a truly 'domestic' acceptance system within SEPA. Throughout their work, the Berlin Group acknowledges the broad diversity of already existing and competing payment schemes and infrastructures, grown from different historical backgrounds, with different business models and stakeholders, and often diverging governance arrangements and functionality for payments throughout Europe already in place.

The Berlin Group Goal

The principle goal is to meet the aims of the ECB, the EC, the EPC and (more recently) the Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB) with regard to a Single Payment Area, and in particular to help foster the development of an integrated, innovative and competitive market for retail payments in euro in the European Union. In its work, the Berlin Group aims to enable a true unbundling of payment schemes and processing activities, as required for providing efficient SEPA payment services to the market. Once established in the market, scheme-independent standards will also allow an easy entry of new payment schemes into the European market, thus contributing to competition in the field of payment systems.

No obligation to standards

The Berlin Group is not engaged in the implementation of standards within or between schemes. Participation to the Berlin Group does not imply either endorsement of any of the solutions identified, or a commitment to implement them. Decisions on the implementation of the standards delivered by the Berlin Group are left to individual market participants.

Governance & Structure

The primary focus of Berlin Group standardisation is the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). The Berlin Group is open for participation to any market supply-side bank (ASPSP), banking association, payment association, payment scheme and interbank processor active in the SEPA payment industry. The Berlin Group also welcomes participants from outside the SEPA countries who want to learn from, or take part in, the creation of the SEPA-focused Berlin Group standards. Any requirements which may not be fitting with the SEPA eco-system, regulations and legislation shall not necessarily influence the Berlin Group work, while non-conflicting requirements will be considered for integration.

The Berlin Group is governed by a Plenary which is the decision making body and several task forces, all of which report to the Plenary. The Authorisation Task Force, and the Clearing Task Force respectively, is working on standardisation of the authorisation application layer, and on clearing and settlement matters respectively. These task forces meet on a regular basis to work on new features and change requests to the standards. Further task forces are the VPN Task Force and the Security Task Force which have defined functional and security requirements for network connections. Research items that could impact the Creditor/Acquirer-to-Debtor/Issuer domain (new developments in e.g. customer authentication, tokenisation, instant payments, mobile payments, or items derived from new regulations or directives) are being discussed in dedicated NextGen Task Forces.

Although the Berlin Group has no formal means and mandate to foster implementation of the standards within or between schemes, it has established an Implementation Task Force (User Group) which is open for implementers of the standard only and has the task to support implementers with questions, to identify and manage interoperability or technical implementation issues relating to the specification standards and to keep the standards in line with the requirements of real implementations. The Implementation Task Force enables implementers to support migration planning, and to initiate change requests based on their practical experience. For inter-scheme connections, implementers have to meet the Berlin Group defined minimum requirements on certification in order to assure a solid and reliable level of interoperability and security to exchange messages and perform the corresponding processing procedures according to the Berlin Group standards.

The Berlin Group is committed to full transparency of its work to the market and has been created in the spirit of an ‘open source’-initiative with the intention to contribute its achievements freely to any interested party. The standards specifications issued via the Berlin Group website are provided free for use.

Available downloads:

20201217 – Berlin Group Information Brochure.pdf

20201217 – Berlin Group Governance Principles – Antitrust Guidelines and Proper Conduct Rules_final.pdf