SEPA will go live in January 2008, but not on Jan 1. Instead, it will be on Monday January 28th 2008.
The European Payments Council explains as follows:- “This date has been chosen simply to decouple the customer go-live date from the end-of-year routines common in both banking and industry, the traditional freeze on changes to banking processes imposed over the Christmas/New Year period and other mandatory changes for this same time period such as the introduction of the euro for Malta and Cyprus. This thereby relieves all parties concerned of an undesirable work load over the Christmas period and minimises risks of errors at a critical time.
The launch of the SEPA Credit Transfer Scheme is on schedule for January 2008. Completely new business rules and standards have been designed and specified. SEPA clearing infrastructures capable of processing mass payments SEPA-wide have been deployed, testing schemes have been finalised and testing will shortly commence. The EPC has ensured that the required scheme management process for both SEPA Credit Transfer and SEPA Direct Debit (to be launched when the EU Payments Services Directive is transposed in Member States) will be deployed in the course of autumn 2007. As far as we have been informed by our members, projects are on schedule for the majority of banks throughout the 13 eurozone countries and the other 18 SEPA countries in the EU and EEA."
However, with less than 100 business days to go to the start of the SEPA initiatives, a myriad of surveys and reports on SEPA-related topics in recent weeks may leave the reader confused. Each survey is backed by an organisation or group which has a vested interest, and so it is hard to discern the real truth.
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For the European Central Bank, Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell has said:-“ In the short term, efforts need to be stepped up to overcome problems that could hamper the timely launch of SEPA in January 2008. Specific attention should be paid to SEPA Direct Debit and to the finalisation of all its features. An additional European debit card scheme is genuinely needed.
In parallel, preparations should get under way to make SEPA more attractive to customers. Merely offering the new SEPA products will not trigger the migration. Banks have to offer customer-friendly services to achieve this. Moreover, the core and basic products will not necessarily deliver extra value to the customer. Banks need to make progress and develop future-oriented products that meet customer demands and needs. Future-oriented products can be built on the foundations that have been laid in the core and basic SEPA products.”
And what about the Irish perspective? We can find no recent public references to SEPA in the Irish media or in industry websites...
