The rationale behind the establishment of a SEPA

Establishing the Internal Market for Payments and a truly Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is a political objective for the Commission, the ECB and the banks. It is the view that harmonisation of essential rules on Euro payment services would facilitate a Single Euro Payment Area and promote efficiency of payments throughout Europe.

SEPA aims at a Pan-European Payments Area within which selected instruments for payments denominated in euro are based on common “scheme” rules. This requires consistent standards and legislation throughout the EU.

SEPA means that European citizens would have to abandon (see note 1 below) some of their existing national practices and to move towards a new way of paying their bills and of receiving their money. This new pan European way of paying will apply both to “face to face” and to “remote” transactions, as well as national and cross border euro transactions within the EU.

As far as wholesale payments are concerned, a new pan-European market infrastructure being in place, SEPA will become a reality if corporates and public entities invest in order to migrate their flow of payments from national means of payments to the new set of pan-European schemes.