There are still few moths left for final dead line of implementing SEPA. Still only tiny % of direct debits are using SEPA. Some estimate that number is only 2 but let's hope it is not correct. For standard payments numbers are a lot better but still under previous estimates. 

Even everything should meet the target in technical level at the February 2014, SEPA will not meet it's biggest goal- giving europeans one payment platform where companies can select one bank and do busines around Europe.

Why is that?

1. If there is no universal reference numbers for payment implemented, customers can not pay to another country and payment gets same automatic treatment as domestic payment. End user most of the cases suffers and companies who receive money pay extra to manually process payments.

2. Paying from online bank is designated for domestic payments where BIC codes are inside system. For foreign payments, SEPA still asks BIC code, even it is in SEPA region. For end customer, it should be same as domestic payment as it use to be, just giving account number and enter other payment data.

3. For companies, local authorities require main bank account to be domestic. It can't be foreign account for tax purposes. This is still true in most of the cases.

Of course you might argue that this wasn't in the main plan when SEPA was introduced, but it should have been the outcome.