Reflections on SEPA

Tomorrow SEPA has been over four months a primary payment system in Europe. It is really good system, in paper. Hopefully soon in reality.

I have collected some of my own real life experience using SEPA during four month period. I reflect my experience to four countries; Belgium where I live, Finland, where I do business, France and Italy where I have been traveling as tourist.

Ok, let' start: Cards- main reason why I first liked the idea of SEPA was idea of needing one international accepted card and I could pay anywhere. True in a sense, but still if I pay my car repair in Belgium or any small purchase, only accepted cards are local Maestro/ similar cards. No Mastercard, no Visa, no any international accepted cards. There are still many countries where local cards are only accepted payment systems together with cash. 

Second thing about cards is that I would like to pay with debit card as often as possible. In general it works, I can even select in many stores debit card when using card, but it is still billed with credit card. It is confusing and cost me more money.

Third thing comes when I am getting cash from ATM. There are still many places where I need cash. Every transaction my home bank gets 1 % of value when using debit card, but when you need cash every month about 1 000 € to pay small fees, losing 10 € every month seems unjust. 

What comes to online payments on my Belgian bank, I am still forced to go international payments and select SEPA, when paying to other SEPA country. It is also missing international reference codes, so half of the time I have call back and explain/ resend copy of payment to company and explain that I have paid my bill. SEPA is not working in a way it should work, where company could need only one bank account in Europe. My Finnish bank is not better, no international new reference codes accepted, meaning my company needs still two bank accounts in two countries.

Also paying local taxes, only domestic banks are accepted.

What comes to slow process of payments, to me it seems like some banks are getting one extra day to manage payments. For example if I pay today, my bank accepts that payment tomorrow and then take two extra days to deliver payment. Should it be 3 day payments. It is not! Or I just got wrong information.

Then there is direct debits and e-invoice, which is out of scope of SEPA. Thank god! Still it is really hard to make both payments when sender is one country and receiver in other country.

In a time SEPA will work, but still there are several bugs which needs to be fixed.