Abstract. On a vertical strip, a Dirichlet problem is considered for a system of two semilinear singularly perturbed parabolic reaction-diffusion equations connected only by terms that do not involve derivatives. The highest-order derivatives in the equations, having divergent form, are multiplied by the perturbation parameter ε 2 ; ε ∈ (0, 1]. When ε → 0, the parabolic boundary layer appears in a neighbourhood of the strip boundary.Using the integro-interpolational method, conservative nonlinear and linearized finite difference schemes are constructed on piecewise-uniform meshes in the x1-axis (orthogonal to the boundary) whose solutions converge ε-uniformly at the rate0´. Here N1 + 1 and N0 + 1 denote the number of nodes on the x1-axis and t-axis, respectively, and N2 + 1 is the number of nodes in the x2-axis on per unit length.