European Parliament approves plans to extend Sepa migration deadline
The European Parliament has voted in favour of proposals to extend the migration deadline for processing Sepa-compliant payment transfers by six months, to August 2014. Under plans tabled by the Commission last month, businesses will have an extra grace period of six months to prepare their systems for accepting Sepa credit and debit transfers before legacy payment instruments are blocked.
The move was mooted in light of migration data which indicted that a substantial number of market participants and particularly SMEs would not have fully migrated to the new common standards by 1 February.
„The objective is to ensure payments are not blocked in cases where stakeholders are not ready, and thus minimise any possible risk of disruption to payments for consumers and businesses, in particular SMEs,” says internal market and services commissioner Michel Barnier (pictured). „Payment service users can thus be certain that their payments will continue to be processed, and those who have not yet migrated have the time to do so. The proposal will apply with retroactive effect.”
The idea has met with resistance from the Eurosystem of central banks, which has been urging the region’s banks to be ready for the original Sepa migration end date of 1 February 2014.
Recent statistics released by the European Central Bank (ECB) show that Sepa migration rates picked up strongly in December, with 74% of credit transfers and 41% of direct debits in the euro area already Sepa-compliant.
But with the European parliament now endorsing the Commission’s extended timetable, formal adoption by the European Council is expected to take place in the coming days, according to finextra.com.
„As I said when I made the proposal last month, I call once more on Member States to fully assume their responsibilities and accelerate and intensify efforts to migrate to SEPA so that all can enjoy its benefits, that is, faster and cheaper payments across Europe. The transition period will not be extended after 1 August.”, says Barnier.
For more details you can download the European Parliament press release
Anders Olofsson – former Head of Payments Finastra
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
