Management summary

A Study on the Awareness of and Readiness for SEPA amongst Corporates and Public Organisations in the Euro area

With the introduction of the SEPA Credit Transfer on 28 January 2008, SEPA has officially become a reality. Even though this is a landmark moment for the integration of the European payments market, all parties involved acknowledge that there still is a lot of work to be done before a true Single Euro Payments Area is realised.

SEPA’s benefits are promoted by its initiators both from the political (European Commission) and the banking (European Payments Council) arenas. The corporate market (represented by the European Association of Corporate Treasurers) too has embraced the vision and acknowledged the potential benefits. The adoption of SEPA in the market is obviously a critical success factor for SEPA. Against this backdrop, this survey primarily intends to provide insight into the awareness of and readiness for SEPA and its implications and potential benefits amongst corporates and public sector organisations.

Overall, we conclude that even though almost all respondents are familiar with SEPA, true awareness of the implications and the potential benefits of SEPA is low and, consequently, market readiness for SEPA is also low. This seems to be caused by a lacking sense of urgency for SEPA among corporates. It is this lack of urgency that is key to increasing SEPA awareness and consequently readiness among corporates throughout Europe. In order to increase the SEPA sense of urgency, all stakeholders (regulators, payment service providers, corporates and public sector organisation) should take their responsibility. As a first step, corporates and Public Organisations should consider to start a SEPA team. As the results of this survey show, this will significantly help the corporate in preparing for SEPA and realizing SEPA’s promised benefits.

Our key findings

• The awareness of the implications and the potential benefits of SEPA is low.
• Most Corporates and Public Sector organisations are unable to quantify the necessary investment.
• A mere 15 % of the respondents have started implementing SEPA solutions.

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