Short Payment Descriptor (SPAYD, SPD) is a compact data format for an easy exchange of payment information using modern electronic channels, such as smart phones or NFC devices. Practically, the format is being deployed in the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. Th ...

(where the format is an accepted unique standard for QR code payments) and the

Slovak Republic Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the ...

, but the format can be technically used with any bank using IBAN account numbers. That includes currently the majority of European countries, some in the Middle East and a few others.

History

Development of the format started in May 2012 during the development of the mobile banking app for Raiffeisenbank a.s. ( Czech branch of Raiffeisen BANK International) in cooperation with a technology company Inmite s.r.o. Originally, the format was intended for use for

P2P Payments Peer-to-peer banking is a term used in the blockchain banking industry and designates an act of transfer of value without the need of an intermediary such as a bank. Peer-to-peer banking is an online system that allows individual members to comp ...

via a

QR Code A QR code (an initialism for quick response code) is a type of Barcode#Matrix (2D) barcodes, matrix barcode (or two-dimensional barcode) invented in 1994 by the Japanese company Denso#Denso Wave, Denso Wave. A barcode is a machine-readable optic ...

. Later, it was generalized for many other usages, such as NFC payments or online payments. The format was created as an open effort from the very beginning and all specification, documentation, source codes, libraries and APIs were open-sourced under the Apache 2.0 license. Therefore, Short Payment Descriptor can be implemented by any subject without any legal concerns or fees. Due to this approach, the format was quickly recognized and accepted by many Czech invoice software companies and adopted by Czech banks.

Československá obchodní banka Československá obchodní banka, a.s. (ČSOB) is one of the largest commercial banks operating in the Czech Republic. It is a universal bank that offers a full range of banking services to individuals and companies. It operates 280 ČSOB bran ...

(together with Zentity s.r.o.) was very active during the format development and it proposed the brand name for the communication to the users. On 14 November 2012, the format was accepted by the

Czech Banking Association Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places *Czech, ...

and submitted to all Czech banks as the official local standard for QR code payments.

Format information

Short Payment Descriptor uses the ideas from the

vCard vCard, also known as VCF (Virtual Contact File), is a file format standard for electronic business cards. vCards can be attached to e-mail messages, sent via Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), on the World Wide Web, instant messaging, NFC o ...

(by the structure) and SEPA payment (semantics). It is designed to be compact, human readable and therefore, easy to implement. The format is based on defined key-value pairs and it can be extended by proprietary attributes (using the "X-" prefix). The string may contain any ASCII printable characters, any other characters must be encoded using the percent encoding.

Example of SPAYD payload

SPD*1.0*ACC:CZ5855000000001265098001*AM:480.50*CC:CZK*MSG:Payment for the goods

Default SPAYD keys

The default keys that are used in the SPAYD format are:

Integration with applications

The file type extension is: *.spayd.

MIME Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is an Internet standard that extends the format of email messages to support text in character sets other than ASCII, as well as attachments of audio, video, images, and application programs. Messa ...

type of the format is: application/x-shortpaymentdescriptor.

Examples of format usage

s with payment information (to be printed on invoices or displayed on the web) that can be scanned using either the mobile phone or a special

automated teller machine An automated teller machine (ATM) or cash machine (in British English) is an electronic telecommunications device that enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, f ...

(ATM) * sending the payment information using the NFC technology * sharing the payment information via the web or e-mail (via a downloadable file or and e-mail attachment)

References

{{reflist

External links

Format Web (in Czech)

Source codes on GitHub
Computer file formats Data serialization formats Mobile payments Open formats