Securities Services
Sibos Amsterdam: SEPA, still on a road to nowhere and still confused
At today's session on Achieving Full SEPA migration, confusion appeared to reign as to whether the credit transfer and direct debit rulebooks developed by the European Payments Council (EPC) were the de-facto standard for SEPA or whether the European Commission would allow existing national payment schemes to be modified so that they resembled the EPC schemes. None of this appears to be getting us any closer to the issue of if and when is full SEPA migration likely?
I have been writing about SEPA for nigh on a decade, but that is not as big a yoke to bear perhaps as the one Gerard Hartsink has on his shoulders as chairman of the European Payments Council (EPC). With SEPA Credit Transfers accounting for just over 9% of all transfers in the eurozone and SEPA Direct Debits, which were only introduced in November last year, accounting for less than 1%, critics of SEPA are mounting by the day. Headlines like “SEPA on a road to nowhere” are becoming commonplace.
So when I walked into today’s session on Achieving Full SEPA Migration: The Impact of An End Date, my expectation was that the discussion would be heated. I only caught the last 10 minutes but it appeared I entered the room at the right time to hear Hartsink of the EPC say that he was shocked at the prospect that the European Commission may allow for “improved domestic legacy payment systems”.
National payment schemes continue to persist in a number of European markets making full migration to SEPA impossible. Most observers agree that an end date for full SEPA migration needs to be set to ensure everyone moves to the new payment instruments and legacy instruments are switched off. “It is shocking to me,” said Hartsink. “Because from the start the message was migrate to the same [SEPA] schemes and technical standards.
If existing national payment schemes were modified to make them close to the EPC SEPA Credit Transfer and Direct Debit schemes, it would create a problem from “an end-to-end perspective ”, said Hartsink as not all scheme participants would be moving in the same direction, which is risky.
Hartsink was also vocal about public administration under representation at the European level on national SEPA committees. He is a strong believer that adoption of SEPA should be driven by public authorities but not all of them are playing ball.
When I asked Hartsink after the session when he expected an end date for full SEPA migration to be announced, he said probably when Hungary assumes the presidency of the EU as they are already using the SEPA Credit Transfer for their own currency even though they have not introduced the euro.
Date Posted:27th October 2010