Happy tenth anniversary to SEPA!

Ten years ago, the European Payments Council (EPC) launched the very first Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) payment scheme, for credit transfers. All national euro credit transfer schemes of the SEPA countries had to be progressively replaced by the pan-European SCT in order to harmonise credit transfer rules in Europe.

This was the first concrete step of the SEPA project, a European Union initiative which the EPC greatly contributed to and continues to support. When the euro was introduced as the common currency for millions of Europeans back in 1999, it was a major advance in European integration. However, cross-border electronic European payments also had to be standardised in order that citizens and businesses received the full benefits of the euro.

This is the purpose of SEPA: to make it as easy and convenient to pay with the same card and payment account in one’s home country than in the rest of Europe.

„Ten years after the launch of the SCT scheme, SEPA is truly anchored into our daily payment habits. The journey towards fully standardised European payments is far from over, with new challenges arising from the digitalisation of our society. We hope the next ten years will be as fruitful for SEPA as the last ten ones have been.”, according to the press release.

Ten facts and figures are worth stressing to celebrate SEPA’s achievements