For the private consumers, the most significant advantage may be convenience: just imagine that you receive your invoices electronically and can directly initiate their payments with one tick or click. This is already reality in some countries, but should become available across SEPA. Even more benefits are possible for corporates, since settling paper invoices is usually a very cost-intensive process. Just imagine that 97.5% of all invoices worldwide are estimated to be paper-based! Let’s think about the average unit cost for a biller per invoice and the average unit cost for a payer. Incoming invoices need to be copied, forwarded, entered into different systems and stored – i.e. touched and managed by a large number of hands and transported physically between all of them. These procedures – and also potential mistakes happening along the handling chain – can be significantly changed by introducing electronic invoices that allow seamless automated handling, including direct links e.g. to payment functions. Approximately 27 billion invoices per annum are being produced in the EU. It is obvious that any change leading to their more efficient handling quickly results in billions of possible savings per year for the European economy. How to foster the development of European E-Invoicing has become an important topic for the European Commission, who is currently setting up an official working group to coordinate the standardisation approaches, to address the legal barriers as well as issues of trust and operational risk.. Let me now briefly conclude.
In Germany, for example, I have noticed that some of the larger banks have begun an advertising campaign on SEPA. I encourage other communities to follow these examples. Let me also be clear on one related point: Banks should not try “misusing” SEPA, and blaming SEPA for any unpleasant changes. In that case, we could end up with a similar debate on perceived price increases as we did after the introduction of the euro. This would help nobody – neither the industry nor the customers. Second, the industry should be clearer on the timetable for the “dual circulation” period of its instruments. The request for clarity on the end date also comes from end-user associations. Interesting in this respect is the ECB’s recent study in cooperation with the banking industry analysing the economic impact of SEPA. 2 The study confirms that two main forces will come to play. On the one hand, cross-border competition and new market participants could affect the revenue side of banks. On the other, automation and electronic processes will enable banks to achieve efficiency gains and cost reductions. The study concludes that the dual implementation phase of SEPA should be as short as possible. As initial investments and higher adaptation costs are necessary in the short run, it is for the banks to decide how they will adapt to the new environment in the medium to long term. Indeed, a shorter changeover to SEPA will allow banks to focus more on their offering of innovative products in the medium to long term.