In countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, safe and efficient e-payment schemes are already available, but in many countries they are still lacking. With a common European e-payment scheme, both consumers and merchants will have a more secure way to pay. The Eurosystem has strongly encouraged the EPC to work on a SEPA solution for e-payments.
This will also benefit very small enterprises, many of which operate in the services sector and need to use an easy and low-cost payment terminal or internet banking. But how can we achieve these benefits? Making use of the opportunities that SEPA offers may simply require the use of the IBAN and BIC instead of national account identifiers.