A good post on Insiden discusses the impacts of expected termination of national credit transfer and direct debit services between the end of this year (2011) and mid-year next year (2012).
Impacts for companies
Companies but also governments, associations, public authorities … should not only respect the deadlines for migration to SCT and SDD but also do so by adopting the ISO 20022 XML SEPA standard for their file transfers with their banks. Migration scenarios should therefore be thought twice, for example by making a choice between a short term migration scenario to SEPA payment instruments but without immediate change of format (use of conversion tools offered by banks) versus a longer term migration scenario adopting new rules and standards at the same time.Impacts for banks and other PSP
The impact of this regulation for the PSP is undoubtedly the loss of interchange fee per direct debit transaction when existing. However, one possibility is left opened: the so called “R” transactions such as Reject, Return … could be billable between PSP under certain conditions.
An obligation is also made to the issuing party (PSP) to ensure the receiving Party (PSP) bank detail BIC (Business Identifier Code) is correct. And finally this project regulation introduces for the PSP the obligation to be reachable for SCT.Impacts for consumers
SEPA migration should be as transparent as possible for consumers; the most difficult will be for them to provide bank details in the international format IBAN (International Bank Account Number) even for national transactions. For example, the new SEPA Direct Debit mandate form must be filled with the debtor IBAN and BIC. Although present on their bank documents for many years, these details are not familiar to them.
See related blog item here:
http://insiden.blogspot.com/2010/12/sepa-migration-end-of-our-good-old.html
