A recently-published gtnews.com article discusses the impact that the adoption of SEPA will have on businesses outside of the financial services industry and raises some important points about its benefits. First and foremost, such businesses will benefit from reduced fees on cross-border payments. In addition, both SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) and the pending SEPA Direct Debit (SDD) promise to offer these companies ways of centralizing their banking relationships as well as the management of their accounts. Such centralization will undoubtedly provide businesses opportunities to save banking costs and facilitate their ability to expand more readily in other geographies. This benefit cannot be overstated because it means that these companies no longer have to maintain banking relationships in disparate locations to set up and collect payments, which can often be a significant administrative hassle that hampers expansion plans.

The discussion further illustrates the need for businesses to prepare for the adoption of SEPA by re-assessing their existing payment creation functions and banking relationships. Accuity is already seeing companies doing just this. For example, many are scrutinizing their existing applications, such as ERP systems, and enhancing them to enable more efficient payments by fortifying such systems with global bank payment data. Those operating in the Euro zone are also acquiring data to optimize the setup of IBAN payment instructions. As SEPA takes hold, we expect this trend to continue. Furthermore, we expect that businesses outside the financial services arena will be looking to the marketplace to provide them with innovative solutions that will help them exploit the full benefits that the adoption of SEPA promises to deliver.

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