SEPA Project has been a hot subject in the financial sector for some time now and will still make the front-line of specialized financial debates even from now on until a common understanding and acceptance will be reached.
Aiming to continuously comply with the financial industry’s standardization initiatives, BIS certified its qPayIntegrator application with SWIFT for its compliance with SEPA standards, thus keeping the SEPA Project on top of its priority list.
Some say the SEPA Project has evolved and we are heading towards its full adherence, others sustain that no important progress has been made and very few will adopt the standards unless a deadline will be imposed by the European Commission. In the meantime, some steps forward have been made on the Romanian local market, having in view TransFonD’s declared intentions to offer a SEPA compliant clearing & settlement infrastructure.
Regularly, BIS has taken the market’s pulse on the status of the project by hosting several workshops; on March 4th, we opened another free debate regarding SEPA updates, where Cash Management, Operations and IT Departments representatives, from corporate and financial institutions, shared the latest news on SEPA, their status & future intentions.
It is difficult to concentrate in one conclusion the pros and cons expressed at this workshop, as well as the progress or stagnation registered by each player in the adoption of SEPA standards, but somehow a strong implementation deadline turned out to be a real driver for this project’s evolution.
Well, it looks like the waiting will soon be over: not long after our workshop, we found out the following:
On March, the 3rd, the European Parliament’s Motion for a Resolution calls again on the Commission to set a clear, appropriate and binding end-date, which should be no later than 31 December 2012, for migrating to SEPA instruments, after which all payments in Euro must be made using the SEPA standards. [source]
This announcement marks the end of the uncertainty and skepticism, this is the call for action! A binding end-date makes everything clear: SEPA instruments are soon to be adopted ! We should all (consumers, companies, banks and infrastructures) find out the rules of the new game, the benefits and actions to be taken in order to comply.
What is your status?