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The champagne glasses will clink in the Charlemange Building in Brussels today (Monday 28^th January) to celebrate “SEPA GOES LIVE”.  Charlie McCreevy, EU Commissioner and long-time advocate of SEPA will be among the chief speakers. After 6 years of planning, the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) officially goes live with the launch of the first SEPA payment instrument for credit transfers.

SEPA is about standardising the payment systems between countries in Europe, and particularly in the Eurozone, so that in the future, it should be as easy to make payments to or from Munich or Milan as it is to Mullingar.  Until this is in place, the Euro cannot be considered as a fully-fledged currency.

While SEPA has the backing of the Commission, it’s a voluntary concept with no European legislation specifying that countries must follow its guidelines. 

Colm Lyon, founder and Managing Director of Realex Payments commented “that the initiative has been six years in the making, and it’s planned that by 2011 the majority of bank customers should be using SEPA systems. It’s an underlying infrastructural change that will pave the way for significant benefits for both businesses and people in terms of payment processing.” Realex Payments runs the Irish web site – www.sepa.ie which provides comprehensive information on the initiative.

So how will SEPA impact Irish Businesses?

• The impact of SEPA will be felt most by Irish importers and exporters, particularly for companies who have facilities in a number of countries. Current cross-border payments can be problematic and time consuming, and as a result, businesses maintain separate bank accounts in each country in which they operate. With the implementation of SEPA compliant products, businesses will require just one bank account within the Eurozone to conduct business. Put simply, payments across national borders should be as easy as payments within those boundaries.
• Businesses will also benefit from increased competition between European banks vying for their banking services.
• The emergence of new SEPA compliant products will also mean new product innovations for invoicing systems, simplifying and improving direct debit and direct credits processes.  

What does SEPA mean for Irish Consumers?

• For the average consumer, the SEPA initiative will mean that their laser card will be will be more acceptable throughout the EU, and when buying online, they will have the option not only to pay by credit or debit card but also to link directly to their bank account to pay from there.
• For the thousands of Irish residents with villas in Spain, SEPA will mean they can pay their direct debits for Spanish utility bills direct from their Irish bank accounts, as simply as they pay their Irish utility bills.

Colm Lyon further added “That the processing of electronic payments is something that happens every day and each person, business and bank in the country are involved. Normally everything works and we therefore don’t hear about the systems and the processes that support the payments. While SEPA will be implemented over several years its impact and the level of change needed is not clear in certain areas, but the scale of the change should not be underestimated.” He added that “a high degree of collaboration among the payment industry – users, processors and financial institutions was important to ensure delivery of the benefits.”

 

About Realex Payments:

Realex Payments enable businesses to sell online. Based on Monkstown in Dublin, Ireland and London, England, they provide services to clients across the globe. The service enables businesses to accept payments on their web sites in a simple, secure and scalable fashion. The business was founded in 2000 by Colm Lyon, who had previously held a senior management position in Ulster Bank Group.

Colm Lyon was Chairman of the Irish Internet Association from 2004 until December 2007. In 2005 Colm was a finalist of the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Colm is joined on the Realex Payments board by Dr John Mooney (Pepperdine University), Stuart Fogarty (AFA O Meara Advertising) and Laurence Crowley (Former Governor of Bank of Ireland) who is chairman of the board.
 
Realex Payments process approximately €4b per annum for 2,500 clients, of which approximately 600 are based overseas and the rest based in Ireland. They are very strong in the airline and travel sector with eight airlines as clients – Aer Lingus and Aer Arann in Ireland and another six in the UK.

Other clients include Quinn Direct, Direct Ski, AXA, CentralR, 4Gifts.ie, FBD, SuperQuinn, Online Motor Tax, Argus Car Hire, Party Poker and Vodafone. In the charity sector they process for Gaol, Trocaire, Bothar, Concern and hundreds more not for profit organisations that now use the internet as a significant way to collect donations.

For further information, contact:

Tracy Glynn, Marketing Executive,

+353 1 280 8559

Realex Payments, Castlecourt, Monkstown Farm, Monkstown, County Dublin