Time to act – SEPA end date now confirmed as February 1st 2014
There is no doubt that the introduction of the single domestic payments area for the Eurozone is good news for clients, financial institutions and corporates. But with the legislation having now been passed, the conversation must turn away from the much discussed benefits and should focus on how stakeholders can prepare.
With changes set to come into force in less than 24 months, banks and corporates that have not yet started the migration process have a challenging road ahead of them. Corporates in particular will need a great deal of preparation time. For example, SEPA Direct Debit’s (SDD) use of creditor-driven mandates places responsibility on the corporate. In many countries this will represent a significant change and will call for new business processes. Considering that new system integration can take up to nine months alone, time is certainly ticking.
The first step for corporates is to establish a migration project and familiarise themselves with the technical requirements, scheme rules as well as its impact on reporting and internal processes. Other considerations that corporates need to think about now is whether to utilise service-based solutions (and then whether to use bank or non-bank service providers) or in house deployment. There’s no need to panic, however, as there are a wide range of solutions available to aid the process of SEPA migration.
The key thing to remember is that SEPA should be embraced. Preparation should not be seen as a burden, but rather an opportunity to review and improve payment processes. And, as getting SEPA-ready is not an option, corporates that have not yet taken action should do so immediately.
If you would like to speak to an expert around SEPA then please get in touch
Logica
Skip to content
