How will SEPA impact your business?

SEPA will bring changes in the following :

The use of International Bank Account Numbers and Bank Identifier Codes replacing Legacy bank account data
New Mandate rules & handling for Direct Debits
A dedicated field for ordering customers' reference (140 Characters)
A new and consistent clearing format (ISO 20022 XML)

The impact on businesses will be through the internal changes required to enable SEPA Credit Transfers and SEPA Direct Debits. This will bring time and resource pressures and will require significant changes in internal ERP and accounting systems.

Opportunities for your business

SEPA offers potential benefits for all sizes and types of business. The impact on your institution will be largely determined by the scope of your business and where you operate. These benefits include:

Lower charges across the payments landscape in Europe
Higher automation levels and improved exception handling
Opportunity to review account and banking structures
Improved liquidity management
Potential to use one platform for all euro payments
Usage of one single file in a common format to receive and send payments
Increased and richer payment narrative and description fields to improve reconciliation

In summary, SEPA will help corporates gain greater visibility and control over their cash management, reduce costs and boost efficiency. It has been estimated that SEPA will bring savings somewhere between €50 - €170 billion for corporate users of SEPA (Deloitte).

Are you equipped to comply with SEPA standards?

The adoption of SEPA is mandatory for all corporates making payments in Euro. As a minimum, companies are required to become SEPA compliant by February 2014. This includes: adapting systems to be able to process SEPA payments; collecting IBAN and BIC information and adjusting direct debit mandate forms.

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