Single European Payments Area - SEPA for Corporates

Why Europe Is Not Ready For Virtual Currencies Like Bitcoin 3

Jul

11

2014

The EBA, European Banking Authority, has been watching Virtual Currencies (VC) since September 2013. In December 2013, the EBA publicly highlighted various concerns due to the risks associated with unregulated virtual currencies. A few days ago on 4th July, 2014 the EBA went further and released an EBA Opinion on Virtual Currencies. In this publication ...

SEPA Status – ECB SEPA Statistics – May 2014 2

Jun

30

2014

As the August 2014 SEPA deadline looms, there is a keen interest from all SEPA stakeholders to understand the share of SEPA transactions as a percentage of the total volume of payments and direct debits in the SEPA zone. Generally the SEPA implementation rate is increasing, but as this article indicates (even based on May ...

SEPA Banks Must Do Better

May

30

2014

The recent post SEPA Holidays 2014/2015 – YOU Need To Know These Dates highlights the importance of communication and awareness in the ‘new’ SEPA world. The crux of the issue is that we have a ‘clash’ between various national public holidays along side SEPA processing days. For example, yesterday (Thursday 29th May, 2014) many European ...

3 Things You Ought To Know About SEPA BIC 4

May

26

2014

During the course of various SEPA implementations I started to realise that the BIC (Bank Identifier Code) requirement was something to get an understanding of early. The BIC value is one which has various requirements depending on country, transaction type and bank. This post runs through the requirements and highlights three ways in which the BIC ...

EPC Launches 3 Month Consultation On the Evolution of SEPA 1

May

19

2014

With less than 3 months to go until the 1st August SEPA deadline, today the EPC launched a 3 month consultation period on possible changes to the SEPA Credit Transfer and SEPA Direct Debit rulebooks. This post examines the details of the announced consultation period, and offers some personal thoughts around the need of this ...

SEPA Holidays 2015 / 2016 – YOU Need to Know These Dates! 6

May

11

2014

Normally when you hear about public holidays in other countries you don’t pay too much attention, why should you? In the ‘old days’ of national clearing systems your euro currency payments and direct debit collections were processed according to your national work days and you knew exactly when there was a national public holiday. With ...

Understand ISO 20022 XML In Less Than 2 Minutes 7

Apr

10

2014

ISO 20022 XML sounds pretty techie, eh? Well, it is techie. But its not as complicated as you think. Unless you’re a systems developer, chances are you don’t need to know the nuts and bolts of ISO 20022 XML. You need an understanding of what it is, and know where to go for more information. ...

What Is A Payment Factory? 8

Apr

7

2014

The post “SEPA Compliance, Tick. What Next?” highlights the current status of your SEPA project and provides an overview of what might be considered next. The SEPA conversation has shifted from compliance to one of process improvement. After all, you have done so much to standardise your euro-based payments and direct debit collections, it would ...

ECB SEPA Statistics – February 2014 2

Apr

3

2014

Earlier this year, we saw that the ECB stats showing SEPA migrations gathering momentum. The ECB SEPA statistics showed improved levels of SEPA compliance, but of course corporates and SME’s were far from ready. Recognising this shortfall, the European Commission proposed a 6 month transition period which was formally adopted by the Council of the ...

SEPA Compliance, Tick. What Next..? 7

Mar

26

2014

Many corporates are either making good progress towards SEPA compliance, or are almost complete. The SEPA conversation has somewhat shifted from SEPA compliance to process improvement. Sure there will be a period of teething while the new SEPA process settles down, but your corporate Euro zone payments and collections landscape should look fairly similar now. ...