Why is adoption of the Directive so important for SEPA?
The Payments Services Directive provides the required legal foundation to make SEPA possible. The banking and payments industry are making substantial investments to ensure the realisation of SEPA. The timetable for SEPA is very tight: the first SEPA products should be available as from 1st January 2008 and by end 2010 a critical mass of users should have migrated or moved over from existing national payment instruments to the new SEPA products. Finally, while SEPA only covers euro payments, today these already represent about 70 percent of all payments in the EU and this percentage will increase in the future as more Member States adopt the euro. For all these reasons, rapid adoption of the Directive is essential for the success of SEPA.
