Collections and payments are weekly: agent-activity invoices from any given calendar week (Monday to Sunday) are entered into an agent's weekly credit or debit note.
This note may include, in addition to daily invoices related to transactions in the day-ahead, intraday bidding, and intraday continuous market, other items such as:
- The monthly invoice corresponding to OMIE's remuneration
- The monthly invoice corresponding to the REMIT service
- Other items (withholding, small differences from previous horizons, etc...)
As a result of this aggregation, an agent will either be a debtor or a creditor on their corresponding settlement horizon.
On the first business day of each week, the market operator publishes aggregate debit and credit notes for each agent with the net amount to be paid or collected.
Likewise, agents have access to the sum to be paid or received online via the Market Operator's Information System.
For the purposes of the collection and payment calendar, any day that is not a holiday at OMIE is considered a business day. The list of holidays at OMIE is available at the following link: Calendar
Agents have access to the collection and payment calendar on the Market Operator's Information System.
A debit or credit note is a PDF document signed with the market operator's electronic signature.
In order to ensure confidentiality as established in the Market Rules, agents may download their weekly debit or credit notes by accessing the Market Operator's Information System with their digital certificate.
More information is available in the documentation on the Market Operator's Information System (https://www.mercado.omie.es).
When an agent is a debtor, payment must be made before 10 a.m. on payment day to the market operator's bank account as it appears on the debit note. As such, the agent must make the payment far enough in advance to meet the given due date.
The payment date will be two business days after the publication of the debit and credit note. In weeks where there are three bank holidays in Madrid from Monday to Friday (or two bank holidays with no possibility of sending payments the last business day, as it is a holiday for the Bank of Spain or a target2 holiday), the payment date will be the business day following the publication of the debit and credit note. In the event that there is a Bank of Spain non-business day between the issuance of the note and the day of payments, the date of payments is delayed by one day.
Agents have the collection and payment calendar at their disposal on the Market Operator's Information System.
The market operator's bank account, to which debtor agents must make payments, is available on the weekly debit or credit notes. This information is also available on the OMIE agents' website.
Debtor agents must include the company-activity code, which appears on the market operator's database, on the transfers.
Additionally, they must make their weekly payment by means of a single transfer (or two transfers, if the agent has chosen to make an advance payment prior to the issuance of the weekly aggregate debit and credit note). Should they not meet this requirement, the agent will have to pay the market operator €25 for each additional transfer issued.
When payment is not received from an agent before 11 a.m. on payment day, and after being notified by the bank of the corresponding default infringement, OMIE will apply a set penalty of €300 to each agent and begin the process of executing their collateral to ensure the creditor agent’s collection.
The defaulting agent will have to face penalties and default interests that are determined according to the rules of the market.
If executing collateral doesn't cover the defaulting agent’s sum when it is time to pay the creditor agents, OMIE will proceed to diminish creditor agents' collection, dividing the unpaid amount among them. Once the amount corresponding to the execution of collateral is received, the creditors will be given the remaining amounts of payment owed them, plus the corresponding default interest.
Once all payments have been received, creditor agents receive their collection on the bank business day after the payment date.
In case that all payments have been received from the debtor agents or cash guarantees are available to cover the payment of the defaulting agents, the collections will be made on the payment day itself.
Should payment not be made by debtor agents, triggering the division of an unpaid amount among creditor agents, the latter would collect less on collection day, even though they would receive the pending amounts plus corresponding default interest once the sum corresponding to the execution of collateral is received.
Agents have the collection and payment calendar at their disposal on the Market Operator's Information System.
The market operator will pay creditor agents on collection day to the accounts that the agents provided in the process of registering on the Market Operator's Information System.
When an agent wishes to change the bank account to which they receive collection, they must do so through the Market Operator's Information System. This change will go into effect on the issuance of a credit note in their next settlement horizon.
In cases where two or more invoices for different activities are issued to the same market agent, the aggregate debit or credit notes can be consolidated into one note, as indicated by the agent. The Market Operator will include in the agent's aggregate debit or credit note the set of daily debit and credit notes issued to the agent on their settlement horizon.
Market agents who belong to the same business group may consolidate notes corresponding to all the companies in the group into one single aggregate debit or credit note.
To do this, they must complete a form that is available in the Market Access Guide (Form VIII- Compensation form for payments between subjects of the same group) and send it to OMIE with the signatures of the attorneys for the different companies that make up the business group. This access guide is available on the 'Agents' menu in the section on 'How to become an agent'
The form will be validated upon receipt.
Agents belonging to a business group must formalize a deposit of cash guarantees in the Market Operator's account in order to cover possible payment defaults derived from an increase in the debit amount as a result of the application of pro-rata for non-payment. The amount of this deposit will be calculated taking into consideration the volume of collections and payments in the market, as well as the average of the five largest payment defaults that have occurred in the market and that required applying the pro rata reduction of the collections of creditor agents
Debtor agents may make a single advance payment to the account, either partial or total, prior to the issuance of a debit and credit note, so that it may be included. Advance payments received after a note is published will be recorded on the payment day.
In addition, and on a voluntary basis, an advance payment can be made per horizon, prior to the issuance of the weekly debit note, releasing their payment obligations before the due date of the invoices and, therefore, reducing the volume of collateral required to operate in the market.
The agents using this procedure have to:
1. Make a deposit into the market operator's account before the last business day prior to the day on which the weekly debit note is issued (the timetable shall be set out in the schedules and timetable document, as is the case for cash collateral deposits).
2. Communicate the pre-payment through the market operator's information system before the aforementioned deadline.
3. As in the case of cash receipts, have a cash balance in the market operator's account to cover the charges that the bank applies to the credit balances in the market operator's account and that the market operator passes on to the market participants in proportion to their cash deposits and prepayments.
Once the advance payment has been accepted, it will be reflected in the "Payment made" column of the market website query:
- Settlements> Payment guarantees> Guarantees surplus for debtor bids
According to market rules, the deadlines for the acceptance of communications, notifications, and requests from agents are established in the document titled, "Schedules and deadlines for the acceptance of agents’ requests," published on the Market Operator's Information System.
When a request has been processed by OMIE, the agent will receive a task in the Market Operator's Information System indicating whether their request has been accepted or rejected.
Market rules do not accept direct debit as a payment method, given that this option cannot be considered an irrevocable payment to the market's account, as there is the option for a debtor agent to reject the deposit.
This method lets an agent not have to make a payment, since OMIE, when publishing the weekly payment note, will automatically deduct payments corresponding to their weekly settlement previously provided by the agent from the deposit. This process will be carried out as long as the agent meets the following conditions:
- They qualify for this method
- They have enough cash in the deposit for payments
- The weekly payment is less than the amount stipulated by the agent
The balance that an agent can have in the deposit is limited to a maximum of the sum of the agent's weekly payments in the last six settlement horizons.
Any agent who wishes to use this option must request to do so through the Market Operator's Information System.
The schedules for replying to agents' requests set the time limits in which the Market Operator attempts to those said requests, acting with due diligence and in good faith, always strictly respecting the order for acceptance or rejection, attending to when the request was received and the information needed to process it. In outstanding circumstances, the market operator may not meet deadlines, such as, for instance, when a high number of unforeseen requests accumulate.
More detailed information on collection and payment can be found in the market rules section, which can be accessed via "Market Rules" → "OMIE Rules."