CONSOLUT SEPA IMPLEMENTATION  (as PDF)

International payments call for appropriate cash flows!

An Irish software company supplies an update to the French subsidiary of its Swiss customer and debits the invoice amount directly from the account of group headquarters in Zurich.

A German supermarket chain orders muesli from a Swiss dairy company and has the goods delivered to its branches in Alsace. The invoice is paid from the British bank account of the supermarket chain because its corporate headquarters are located in London.

SEPA: THE NEW BINDING STANDARD FOR EUROPEAN PAYMENTS

SEPA combines all national formats for credit transfers and direct debits in European payments. All 27 EU member states, the EEA member states as well as Monaco and Switzerland  have undertaken to support SEPA. Therefore about 500 Million bank customers will use SEPA.

The objective of the EU is that all national bank transfer and direct debit formats should be handled via SEPA; this applies both to national and to international transactions.

EU plans are for all European bank transfers to be processed as SEPA transactions by the end of 2012 and all European direct debits to be handled via SEPA by the end of 2013. All the banks of the participating countries have been under an obligation to support SEPA transactions since the end of 2010. The SEPA standards are defined and available within the SAP R/3 system.

You can enjoy the benefits of SEPA immediately:

• Lower bank charges.
  • The cost of bank transfers to other SEPA users is reduced by up to 94 %.
• Simpler payment procedures irrespective of destination country
• Faster payments: a bank transfer to another SEPA country only takes the same time as a transfer within your own country
• International direct debits become possible for the first time
  

SEPA AT A GLANCE

SCOPE

SEPA has been available for 

• Credit transfers since January 2008
• Direct debits since November 2009