By contrast with the developments in large-scale payment systems, the situation for retail payment services today is nearly unchanged as compared with that prevailing before Monetary Union: in 2005 there were still 15 different retail payment systems within the euro area, compared with 20 in 1998.
This fragmentation of retail payment services implies sizeable costs in terms of foregone financial benefits that could result from the integration of retail payments, as a result of standardisation and the opening-up of payment services markets to more competition. The European banking industry has, however, launched an initiative to create a Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).