EPC Girocode

EPC Girocode is the European Payments Council's QR format for SEPA Credit Transfer. A scanned Girocode pre-fills the payee's IBAN, amount, and remittance message in the payer's banking app — saving a manual copy-paste of bank details. Supported natively by Sparkasse, Volksbank, Deutsche Bank, ING, N26, Revolut, and most German/Austrian/Dutch banking apps. Outside SEPA, Girocode does nothing.

Canonical spec: EPC069-12 v2.1 — Quick Response Code Guidelines to Enable Data Capture for the Initiation of a SEPA Credit Transfer (2022).
Encoding: Plain UTF-8 text — not TLV, not structured. Twelve fixed-position fields separated by \n (LF, U+000A). Max payload 331 bytes.
Scheme: SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) or SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst). The QR triggers a one-off credit transfer; no direct debit / standing order.

Payload structure — 12 lines, newline-separated

Line	Field	Length	Required	Notes
1	Service tag	3	Yes	Fixed value `BCD`.
2	Version	3	Yes	`001` (original spec) or `002` (v2 — BIC now optional within EEA).
3	Character set	1	Yes	`1`=UTF-8, `2`=ISO-8859-1, `3`=ISO-8859-2, etc. `1` is the only safe choice.
4	Identification	3	Yes	`SCT` (standard Credit Transfer). SCT Inst uses the same tag — instant/standard is an acquirer decision.
5	BIC	0, 8, or 11	No (v002)	Required in v001; optional in v002 for SEPA payments. Include it for non-EEA receivers.
6	Beneficiary name	1–70	Yes	Natural-language name. Character set per line 3.
7	IBAN	1–34	Yes	No spaces or formatting. `DE89370400440532013000`, not `DE89 3704 0044 0532 0130 00`.
8	Amount	4–12	No	Format: `EUR10.00`. Omit to let the payer enter the amount at scan time.
9	Purpose	0–4	No	ISO 20022 External Purpose Code. Examples: `GDDS` (goods), `CHAR` (charity).
10	Structured remittance reference	0–35	No	ISO 11649 RF creditor reference — for automated reconciliation. Mutually exclusive with line 11.
11	Unstructured remittance info	0–140	No	Free-text payment reason. Mutually exclusive with line 10.
12	Beneficiary-to-originator info	0–70	No	Optional hint text shown to the payer in the bank app (e.g. "Rechnung 2026-0042").

Canonical test vector — v002 minimal

Transfer of €12.50 to Max Mustermann at Commerzbank, IBAN DE89370400440532013000, no BIC, unstructured reference "Rechnung 42":

BCD
002
1
SCT

Max Mustermann
DE89370400440532013000
EUR12.50


Rechnung 42

Note the empty lines at positions 5 (no BIC), 9 (no purpose), 10 (no structured reference). They're required — the line count must be exactly 12 (or 11 if line 12 is omitted).

Live IBAN validator (mod-97)

Girocode rejects any IBAN that fails the ISO 13616 mod-97 checksum. Below is the same validator Abundera runs inline inside the Girocode generator — runs in your browser.

IBAN (spaces OK)

Enter an IBAN to validate.

Common pitfalls

Line endings. EPC069-12 mandates LF (\n, U+000A). CR+LF (\r\n) breaks some Android banking apps. If you copy-paste the payload out of Windows Notepad you'll end up with CR+LF; strip the CRs before QR encoding.
BIC required for v001, optional for v002. Always emit version 002 for SEPA-internal transfers — saves 8–11 chars of payload and works with every modern banking app. Include BIC only for legacy v001 apps (mostly retired) or non-EEA receivers.
Amount format strict. EUR10.00 — currency code prefix, dot separator, exactly two decimals. EUR10, EUR10,00, 10.00 EUR all fail.
Cannot mix structured + unstructured reference. Line 10 and line 11 are mutually exclusive. If both are non-empty, the spec says the QR is invalid; in practice some apps accept it and drop one, which creates reconciliation mismatches.
IBAN spaces. The IBAN field (line 7) accepts no whitespace. Human-readable DE89 3704 0044 0532 0130 00 must be stripped to DE89370400440532013000 before encoding.
Max payload 331 bytes. QR payload exceeding 331 bytes is rejected by the spec. Long beneficiary names + long remittance messages + BIC + IBAN can push over. Banking apps display an error on scan; the QR doesn't self-warn during encoding.
Character set trap. Line 3 says which charset applies to lines 6, 11, 12. UTF-8 (value 1) is the only realistic choice for international names. ISO-8859-1 can't encode anything outside Western European Latin.
SEPA zone only. Girocode payments only work between SEPA-participating accounts (EU + EEA + Switzerland + UK + Monaco + San Marino + Andorra + Vatican). Scanning a Girocode in a non-SEPA banking app either fails or opens a normal transfer screen with blank fields.
No direct debit. Girocode is SEPA Credit Transfer only. Pull/subscription flows (standing orders, recurring mandates) aren't expressible in Girocode. For those, pair the QR with a SEPA mandate document.
PSD2 return rights. SEPA Credit Transfer is push-based and consumer-authorised at scan. Consumer refund rights under PSD2 still apply (e.g. unauthorised transaction within 13 months). Merchants must retain the signed authorisation trail separately — the QR itself isn't a contract.

Banking-app compatibility

App / region	Girocode support	Notes
Sparkasse (DE)	Native	The original target for Girocode. Full support.
Volksbank / Raiffeisen (DE, AT)	Native	Full support in the VR-BankingApp.
Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, Postbank (DE)	Native	Scan via their mobile app's "Überweisung" flow.
ING (DE / NL)	Native	Also scans iDEAL QRs in the NL app.
N26, Revolut	Native	Full support across all supported countries.
Erste Bank, Bank Austria (AT)	Native	Austria adopted Girocode alongside Germany.
Crédit Agricole, BNP Paribas (FR)	Partial	Some French banks scan Girocode, most prefer the older paper reference format.
Generic iOS/Android camera	No	Native cameras don't parse the `BCD` text format as a payment intent. User must open their banking app first.