This will motivate a lot of companies to finally set sail and start implementing SEPA. The outcome of the third stage of the SEPA journey, SEPA for cards, is perhaps the most uncertain. The Eurosystem continues to encourage market participants to introduce a European card scheme.
Joint research by the European Central Bank (ECB) and De Nederlandsche Bank shows that the launch of a new European card scheme could provide the impetus for solving the problem of interoperability and overcoming the costly fragmentation of the European card market.