The current national payment scheme for transfers and direct debits will cease to exist in January 2014 and will be replaced by two pan-European schemes, the SEPA transfer (SCT) and the SEPA debit (SDD). SEPA, also known as the Single Euro Payment Zone, aims to overcome technical, legal and market barriers between EU countries in order to create a single market for euro payments.
Its practical application
From a purely practical point of view, the legal provisions incorporated by SEPA affect companies in the following way:
- The account number and bank code will be replaced by IBAN and BIC codes.
- The format of the payment files will be changed from the current Notebooks to the new SEPA standard “ISO 20022”
- Payment to suppliers in SEPA countries will be done quickly and easily since only a single bank account is needed to make and receive payments in the SEPA zone.
The application of the SEPA zone will affect both the countries that are part of the euro, as well as those that remain outside. On February 1, 2014 , the deadline for SEPA migration is established, for transfers and debits in the euro zone, while October 31, 2016 is the deadline for countries that do not belong to the community currency.
Taking this reality into account, a recent study by Sage is strikingly striking, in which it is stated that 20% of medium-sized companies do not yet know what SEPA is , an additional 20% are not aware that the deadline is February 2014 and up to 50% state that they do not feel prepared for SEPA, the same percentage of those who state that they do not have a computer solution compatible with the new legislation.
Precisely for this reason and to facilitate the transition to the Single Zone of Payments in Euros for companies, the SEPAesp portal has been launched , which in addition to information on new legislation and related news, offers very useful applications, as a tool conversion that will allow us to convert Client Account Codes (CCC) into International Codes (IBAN – International Bank Account Number) and calculate BIC codes.
