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SEPA harmonises the way we make and process retail payments in euro.
SEPA enables customers to make cashless euro payments to anyone located anywhere in Europe, using a single payment account and a single set of payment instruments.
If you travel from one euro area country to another, you can easily buy something with euro in cash. But making cashless payments outside your home country, for example with a debit card, is more difficult. This is due to technical, legal and market barriers stemming from the period prior to the introduction of the single currency. SEPA aims to overcome these barriers. The result will be a single market for retail payments in euro.
The single market will extend beyond the euro area and even the European Union (SEPA countries).
SEPA is an initiative of the European payments industry. The Eurosystem, the European Commission and other institutions play supporting roles and define the objectives (Stakeholders).
On 2 June 2010 the European Commission published a Working Paper on SEPA migration end-date and invited all parties involved in the SEPA process to respond to the thoughts laid down in the document. In a note published on 6 July 2010, the Eurosystem welcomes and supports the European Commission’s suggestion to impose an end-date for migration to SEPA credit transfers and SEPA direct debits by means of an EU regulation. A legally binding instrument is considered necessary for the successful migration to SEPA, as the project would otherwise be subject to serious risk of failure.
| SEPA indicators at a glance (euro area) | |
|---|---|
| SEPA credit transfers as % of total transactions | 8.8 % (*) |
| SEPA direct debit as % of total transactions | 0.05 % (*) |
| EMV transactions as % of total transactions at POS terminals | 52.5 % (**) |
| (*) June 2010 (**) December 2009 | |
