SEPA (Single Euro Payment Area) End Date Published 1st February 2014

[Heike Jensen]

Finally, the European Parliament has announced they will be voting on the SEPA Regulation in February 2012.

The proposed deadline for changeover to the new system for both SEPA Credit Transfers (SCT) and SEPA Direct Debits (SDD) is 1st February 2014. This means that at these End Dates the respective banks has to be SEPA compliant for these SEPA products. In the Member States not using the Euro as their currency, the deadline is 30 October 2016.

For some time now there has been doubt in the market as whether an end date will be set for the introduction of SEPA Credit Transfers (SCT) and SEPA Direct Debits (SDD). This announcement has firmly removed any uncertainty.

To which extent does the End Date affect the companies' strategy to change the file formats to XML20022 standards?

Which other preparations are necessary for the companies now?

[ElinaK]

SEPA end date set.

"European Parliament Adopts SEPA Regulation. This Regulation Effectively Mandates Migration to SEPA by 1 February 2014 in the Euro Area.

On 14 February 2012, the European Parliament adopted the 'Regulation Establishing Technical Requirements for Credit Transfers and Direct Debits in Euros' (the SEPA Regulation). The SEPA Regulation defines the mandatory deadlines for compliance of euro credit transfer and direct debit schemes with this legislative act. In the euro area, this will be 1 February 2014. Effectively, this means that as of this date, existing national euro credit transfer and direct debit schemes will have to be replaced by the SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) and SEPA Direct Debit (SDD) Schemes."

[ktpama]

Will be interesting to follow how many and what kind of national / community wide AOSs (Additional Optional Services) will be born when communities truly start thinking how to migrate to SEPA.

Finland needed two for credit transfer, plus some other commonly agreed market practices.

[ktpama]

The path to SEPA migration (video)

"Former European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services & non-executive board member at Sentenial Charlie McCreevy and Sean Fitzgerald, CEO of Sentenial discuss the most urgent issues confronting SEPA and SEPA migrations."

Finextra audio/video: The path to Sepa migration

[Kimmo]

I would recommend that companies start thinking about the process sooner than later. The companies own ERP systems must be able to send / receive XML based material. If that isn't the case then a conversion service should be available.

In Finland during 2011 many consultancy firms and various service providers were quite busy because such a number of companies wanted to be End Date ready and have their systems ready when the country migrated to SEPA- era permanently last November.

So, keeping that in mind and avoiding all "last minute" fuss, the time to act would be actually now. Preferably yesterday

[ktpama]

An article on end date migration challenges:

SEPA's Tight Deadline

[David]

interesting article! coming from the bank side I haven't so much considerd the impact for many corporates.

[ktpama]

This will for sure generate lots of business to various consulting companies.

But there are also technical advances that help in the migration.

One example is third party applications for SDD mandate management: Logica Mandate Management for Corporates (I'm not from Logica, sorry if this seems like an advertisment).

Another thing is the requirement for ISO20022 XML format in C2B; there are third parties and banks that can help with testing by providing web based test tools to test the xml format generated by corporate's erp system by giving 'realtime' feedback on where the material fails. This can speed up the development & testing process significantly.

Third example could be BBAN -> IBAN & BIC conversion service by banks to corporates (on each domestic market where applicable) used for (as automatic as possible) update of companies books with valid supplier bank data.

But what really will be the challenge is communication; how to truly reach the smallest players; consumers, SMEs, small IT houses etc, how make them do the right things, ease the migration and improve attitude towards the migration with good quality communication.

[David]

Agree, and communication is very difficult even if it concerns a few people speaking the same language with the same cultural background. In this case it concerns not only people with different background, language etc but also organisations and individuals reluctant to change.

[Kronos]

The best option is to go for an end to end solution. If you can find a solution where consultants are fully integrated in yoru Bank's solution, this will ease the pain. You may also wish to start thinking firstly on the payable side where there is no mandate management.