The European payments market generates more than 130 billion non-cash payments per year, representing approximately one-quarter of the global payments business. For more than 20 years, Europe has strived to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of the payments market.
Substantial achievements have been made over the years and what some people used to consider challenging, or even impossible, has now become part of our everyday lives. The SEPA project is a perfect example. Having enjoyed the ease of SEPA payments since 2014, we can hardly remember a time when credit transfers and direct debits functioned smoothly within countries but not necessarily across borders.