pain.001.001.03 after 14 Nov 2026

Sources below were read on 2026-11-02. 14 November 2026 is not the date in the EPC notices. The date the EPC postponed was 15 November 2026, and it was the end date for unstructured addresses. The Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft has suspended the November 2026 end of the old payment-file versions and has not published a replacement date.

Re-read on 4 November 2026: the EPC note of 30 October 2026 still says the Payment Scheme Management Board decided on 29 October 2026 to postpone setting a new end date. The board will reconvene by February 2027 to decide one. February 2027 is that decision point, not a new shutdown date.

What was postponed

On 9 September 2026 the EPC Payment Scheme Management Board decided to delay the planned November 2026 end of unstructured addresses under all five EPC payment scheme rulebooks. The EPC said it would keep supporting unstructured addresses beyond the previously announced 15 November 2026 deadline, and that the board would meet again in October 2026 to set a new end date. That September note is the EPC delay announcement.

The follow-up is dated 30 October 2026. The board decided on 29 October 2026 to postpone setting a new end date. It will reconvene by February 2027 to decide one. Unstructured, hybrid, and structured addresses all remain in the schemes. The EPC still recommends moving to fully structured addresses. Source: EPC, 30 October 2026.

EPC guidance EPC153-22 version 2.2, dated 30 September 2026, takes the fixed date of 15 November 2026 out of the unstructured-address rule and replaces it with a future end date that is still to be set. Version 2.1, dated 5 October 2025, had changed an earlier 22 November 2026 date to 15 November 2026 so it matched the Swift MX release in the second full weekend of November 2026. Document page: EPC153-22.

That EPC decision is about the address format inside payment messages. It is not, on its own, a sentence that says every bank must keep accepting a pain.001.001.03 customer file.

What the Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft suspended

On 24 September 2026 the Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft wrote that SWIFT and the EPC will keep tolerating unstructured addresses in the interbank space beyond November 2026. Because of that, the DK suspended the Format LifeCycle end, planned for November 2026, of the old formats for SEPA payments, cross-border transfers, and euro urgent transfers, and said it would keep operating them temporarily. New end dates will be published later, in line with the new interbank dates still to be set by SWIFT and the EPC. The note is on ebics.de, 24 September 2026, and the same paragraph is on the Format LifeCycle page.

The LifeCycle page links a PDF named SEPA-LifeCycleFormatversionen-StandSeptember_2026.pdf. Footnote 1 says the marked item stays usable for the time being, and that a concrete new end date will be set afterwards by the EPC and SWIFT and published there. In that PDF the “see 1” marker is on the Anlage 3 version 3.3 row (valid from 17 November 2019). That row lists pain.001.001.03 / pain.008.001.02 / pain.002.001.03, and pain.001.001.08 for SCT Inst with a timestamp. The HTML notice covers a wider set of old formats than that one row. This page does not turn the footnote marker into a complete list.

The same PDF shows pain.001.001.03 as the DK SEPA schema (TVS) from Anlage 3 version 3.0 (20 November 2016) through version 3.6 (20 November 2022). From version 3.7, which the PDF says applies to SEPA from 17 March 2024, the SCT schema listed is pain.001.001.09. EPC153-22’s history calls the move that took effect on 17 March 2024 a migration to the 2019 version of ISO 20022. The EPC and DK texts read for this page do not use the year 2009 as the label for pain.001.001.03.

The LifeCycle page, as read on 2026-11-02, still says the new end dates are yet to be set. It does not mention the EPC’s 29 October 2026 decision to wait until February 2027 before choosing an unstructured-address date.

Where 14 November 2026 comes from

Volksbank Raiffeisenbank eG (VReG) has a customer page on the suspended ISO 20022 migration. It says the formats it had named can still be submitted on all of its channels after 14 November 2026. The current formats it lists are pain.001.001.03 for credit transfers, pain.008.001.02 for direct debits, pain.001.001.03 for instant transfers, and DTAZV for cross-border transfers. The later formats it lists are pain.001.001.09 and pain.008.001.08. It also says no binding new end date for unstructured addresses has been set. The page does not show a publication date. Source: VReG.

That is one bank’s statement about its own channels. The DK notice does not name the day 14 November, and the EPC notices name 15 November 2026 as the date that was postponed.

How to tell which pain.001 version a file is

The version is the namespace on the Document element:

<Document xmlns="urn:iso:std:iso:20022:tech:xsd:pain.001.001.03">

<Document xmlns="urn:iso:std:iso:20022:tech:xsd:pain.001.001.09">

SepaCheck checks both of those namespaces. The report field version is pain.001.001.03 or pain.001.001.09. A file with a different pain.001 namespace is recognised and not treated as one of those two.

Check a pain.001 file

What is still unclear

No new end date for unstructured addresses is set. The next EPC decision point named in the 30 October 2026 note is February 2027, which is when the board will decide, not a new shutdown date.
The DK has not published a new end date for the old file versions. Whether a given bank still accepts pain.001.001.03 after November 2026 is that bank’s rule. VReG says its listed formats can still be submitted after 14 November 2026. This page did not survey every bank.
This page did not re-read every older PDF on ebics.de. If an older DK document still prints November 2026 as a hard end, the later statement is the 24 September 2026 suspension.
The year “2009” does not appear in the EPC and DK texts cited here as the name of pain.001.001.03. Those texts identify the file by the schema name.

Sources

EPC, delay of the address-format timeline. PSMB meeting 9 September 2026. Postponed date: 15 November 2026. A new date was expected in October 2026.
EPC, 30 October 2026. Decision of 29 October 2026: do not set the new unstructured-address end date yet. Reconvene by February 2027.
EPC153-22, version 2.2 dated 30 September 2026. Version 2.1 dated 5 October 2025 had set 15 November 2026.
Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft on ebics.de, 24 September 2026.
DK Format LifeCycle, including SEPA-LifeCycleFormatversionen-StandSeptember_2026.pdf.
Volksbank Raiffeisenbank eG (VReG), read on 2026-11-02. The page itself shows no publication date.

Questions

Is pain.001.001.03 switched off on 14 November 2026?

14 November 2026 is not the date in the EPC notices checked on 2 November 2026. The EPC date that was postponed was 15 November 2026, and that date was about unstructured addresses, not a published EPC shutdown of the pain.001.001.03 file. The Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft said on 24 September 2026 that it suspended the November 2026 end of old formats for SEPA payments, cross-border transfers, and euro urgent transfers, and that those formats continue for the time being. It has not published a new end date. Volksbank Raiffeisenbank eG (VReG) writes that the formats it lists, including pain.001.001.03 for credit transfers and instant transfers, can still be submitted after 14 November 2026. Another bank can set its own channel rule.

Has the EPC set a new end date for unstructured addresses?

No. On 29 October 2026 the EPC Payment Scheme Management Board postponed setting a new end date. The EPC said on 30 October 2026 that the board will reconvene by February 2027 to decide one. EPC guidance EPC153-22 version 2.2, dated 30 September 2026, says unstructured addresses stay allowed until a future end date that is still to be set.

How can I tell pain.001.001.03 from pain.001.001.09?

Read the xmlns on the Document element. pain.001.001.03 uses urn:iso:std:iso:20022:tech:xsd:pain.001.001.03. pain.001.001.09 uses urn:iso:std:iso:20022:tech:xsd:pain.001.001.09. SepaCheck reads that namespace and reports the version.

Did the DK lifecycle PDF name a new end date?

No. The September 2026 SEPA lifecycle PDF says, in footnote 1, that the marked row is temporarily still usable and that a concrete new end date will be set afterwards by the EPC and SWIFT and published on that page. In the PDF text, the “see footnote 1” marker sits on the Anlage 3 version 3.3 row, which lists pain.001.001.03 together with pain.001.001.08. The HTML notice on the same site is wider: it covers old formats for SEPA payments, cross-border transfers, and euro urgent transfers. This page does not treat the single footnote marker as a complete list.

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