The SNCE

The SNCE, the national electronic clearing system, is a retail payment system established under Law 41/1999 and managed since 2005 by Sociedad Española de Sistemas de Pago, S.A. (Iberpay), which is owned by the participating banks. The Banco de España is responsible for supervising Iberpay and for overseeing the SNCE.

The SNCE processes transactions initiated with retail payment instruments, such as Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) standard and instant credit transfers, SEPA direct debits, cheques, bills of exchange and various other transactions. Operationally, banks exchange all relevant payment information through the SNCE’s different subsystems.

Generally, the interbank obligations resulting from the multilateral clearing of these transactions are settled in dedicated cash accounts that participants hold in TARGET-Banco de España.

For SEPA instant credit transfers, settlement is conducted on a gross basis for each individual transaction and in real time, 24/7. They are recorded on Iberpay’s own books (position accounts held for each participant), backed with prefunding in the Target Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) service as per Eurosystem policies.

The SNCE also has a subsystem dedicated solely to the interbank settlement of card transactions, where net multilateral positions calculated by the STMP, the interbank clearing system, are presented by the participating banks to be settled on Iberpay’s own books, backed with prefunding in the T2 system.

Entities that meet the criteria outlined in the SNCE’s internal rules can become participants. The Banco de España uses the SNCE for processing its own retail payments as well as those of the Government. There are direct and indirect SNCE participants (the latter of which settle in the system through a direct participant).

Iberpay has established technical gateways with various European payment systems.