SEPA Status – ECB SEPA Statistics – May 2014 2

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

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

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 ...

SEPA Mobile Payments – An Introduction 5

When it comes to payments, there is a tremendous amount of buzz around mobile money payments. Its fair to say that various countries in Africa are leading the way when it comes to mobile money payments, and other regions are looking at the success and wondering if the model can be replicated. The EPC has released ...

EPC Launches 3 Month Consultation On the Evolution of SEPA 1

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

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 ...

Why SEPA Batch Booking Is Important 13

In the last few weeks I have come to realise the importance of the SEPA Batch Booking tag, <BtchBookg>. The tag is one I was familiar with, but didn’t realise the significance of. During a SEPA payments go live we started seeing a debit for every single payment in the bank statement. Oh nuts! The requirement was ...

5 SEPA Scams to be Aware Of 4

For many banks, corporates and SME’s (Small, Medium sized Enterprises) their main SEPA focus right now is to ensure compliance. Of course security, validation and verification is of utmost importance, but in the rush and haste of SEPA compliance, one may drop their guard and it is exactly at this moment that the SEPA scammers may seize their ...

SEPA: IBAN Number & SWIFT BIC – The Definitive Guide 13

Granted it is a little late in the day to start writing about the IBAN number and SWIFT BIC code. But there will be many SEPA implementations happening over the coming months, and so with that in mind I felt it was important to have a summary guide outlining what the IBAN number is, how it relates to SEPA, ...

SEPA XML in a Nutshell 20

The intention of this post is to give you an understanding of what XML is, how it relates to SEPA and items to take note of. It will not give you the A-Z of XML, consult your technical resources for that and the EPC website. Lets start with the basics, what is XML? eXtensible Markup ...