For corporates, SEPA is expected to enable bank relationships and account structures to be rationalised. A centralised treasury, better liquidity management and optimised payment processing will be made possible. Even for smaller, mainly nationally-oriented corporates, SEPA is expected to provide benefits as competition in the banking sector will increase, leading to a broader range of banks and banking services to choose from.
However, in order to realise these benefits, corporates may have to adapt their customer-to-bank interfaces and internal processes to SEPA standards. The direct cost of making these adaptations might be considerable. Another reason for the reluctance to “go SEPA” that I touched upon earlier is the difficulty of obtaining the IBAN and BIC information of business partners and clients. Public administrations, i.e.