SEPA and payments industry – challenges concerning standards and operations

Introduction. The Single Euro Payments Area is a payment-integration project of the European Union. SEPA is aiming to create an integrated euro payments market and to harmonize the national and crossborder euro payment systems, making cross-border transactions as simple and cheap as national ones. The SEPA regulations is aiming to increase harmonization, through using of common payments formats and computer languages.

Aim of the study. The goal of using a common standard in the industry in order to facilitate interoperability among systems and infrastructures, will be more and more important. In this view, standardizing messages across institutions and companies has never been more important. The ISO 20022 provides interoperability and consistency to a highly complex industry, thereby reducing the risk of errors and speeding up processes.

Keywords: SEPA, payments, ISO 20022, infrastructure, interoperability.