October 12, 2009 The EBA Clearing Company (Paris) announced that its Pan-European Automated Clearing House (PE-ACH) STEP2 is ready to begin processing SEPA Direct Debits (SDD) from November 2, the date on which the new direct debit schemes are to be launched. The PE-ACH provider has supported 71 SDD Core banks and 52 SDD B2B banks in carrying out their SDD readiness testing for direct participation in STEP2 prior to the start of the new schemes. From November on, over 2,000 direct and indirect participant banks will be able to exchange SDD Core consumer customer and B2B commercial customer collections via the STEP2 platform, said a release.

"At EBA CLEARING, we are expecting a progressive ramp-up of our SDD Core and B2B offerings, which will certainly gain in speed after a SEPA migration end date has been set," said John Broxis, director, STEP2 Services at EBA Clearing in a statement. "Our STEP2 system is ready to absorb rapidly rising volumes in a smooth fashion and to satisfy the growing needs of our participants around the new SEPA direct debit instruments."

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