STET was established in December 2004 by France's six main banks, namely BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, Crédit Mutuel, Groupe Caisse d'Épargne, Groupe Banque Populaire, and Société Générale, to replace a previous system known as the Système interbancaire de télécompensation [fr] (SIT). The initiative was intended as a French banking industry response to the creation of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).[5] The retail payments operated by STET, named CORE(FR), replaced SIT which ceased operations in October 2008.[2]: 148
CORE clears payments from retail instruments such as wire transfers, promissory notes, direct debits, documentary collections, checks, or card payments, and allows for the exchange of SEPA Credit Transfers (SCTs) in France and across the EU.[3] CORE started operations in January 2008 and eventually replaced the SIT in mid-2008.
In March 2013, the CEC, which operated as interbank clearing house in Belgium, in turn completed its migration to the STET platform.[6] The Belgian and French clearing services members are still treated differentially, however.[7]
In December 2015, STET merged with SER2S, the manager of real-time payment instructions for the French CB payment cards consortium, and converted itself into a French joint-stock company, STET SA.[8] By end-2016, the Bank of France, Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa and HSBC France had joined the shareholder banks as direct participants in CORE(FR), and the system had 177 indirect participants.[2]: 148
CORE migrated its SEPA Direct Debits (SDDs) on 21 November 2016 to the pan-European platform SEPA.EU, and its SCTs in 2018.[9] SEPA.EU allows for instant payments, activated on 2 November 2017,[10] as well as the management of APIs in line with the second Payment Services Directive.[11] As described in 2016, its competitors in Europe included RT1 (by EBA Clearing), equensWorldline (by Worldline), and Nets [da].[8]
