(2 min. read)
The inevitable finally happened: the deadline for SEPA for Euro countries to introduce SEPA Credit Transfers and SEPA Direct Debit will be postponed with 6 months. You did not have to be a genius or a fortune teller to have been able to see this coming. Early 2012 I attracted a lot of flack and negative reactions (and even disbelieve that you would say something like this in public as this would work as a self-fulfilling prophecy) from people in the payments industry when I indicated the high chances or even inevitability of this happening in my keynote at a major payments conference in Amsterdam. This post is not about “I told you so” though.
Payments are the lifeline of our society and giro payments make out a considerable part of the daily transactions between all actors in our society/economy. Shutting down the legacy formats (as a consequence of the deadline) without having the vast majority of companies, institutions and citizens migrated would have been catastrophical to the fragile economies of Europe. And as we have known for a long time the adoption rates of both SCT and SDD have been picking up much to slow. So this decision can not come as a surprise.
Once the SEPA gauntlet was casted more then 10 years ago there was no return possible. The aims of the SEPA are noble, they still are, but the effort needed by all market participants individually has been vastly underestimated. The benefits, which are real, have been overstated. I have dedicated one or two posts here at Red Planet Dust on the cumbersome outcome of the standardization process. And I have not seen any client (whether being processor, bank, FI or corporate) that could show a positive business case due to SEPA; non!
We are on this track whether you like it or not, or whatever your personal thoughts are about it. If I was paid €100 every time I had to discuss the personal ideas on SEPA of the people I encountered during my SEPA related projects over the last couple of years I would be able to comfortably buy a Tesla S85+ today. With the knowledge of hindsight this SEPA process would most probably not even have been started as (today’s) politicians would hesitate to unleash such a long lasting, invasive and expensive change.
That said the SEPA is a conditio sine qua non for the European Union. What is 6 months extension in light of the stakes and the time-lines involved in this process?
SEPA leaves a lot to be desired. It is not perfect (by far), as real life solutions never are. And even tough it will be hard to see by most individuals let alone acknowledge the SEPA is a major milestone in the development of Europe.
For further reading on SEPA at Red Planet Dust go to SEPA landing page.