SEPA – The Harmonisation of Electronic Payment Transaction Systems poses as Challenge for the Industry

The Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) describes the idea of a pan-European (or at least EURO-wide) standardised payment area in which no more differences between national and cross-border payments will arise for the customers in the future. International payments will then be as easy, secure, quick and reasonable as national ones are. 

This means a great challenge for the industry since numerous national-specific features for the handling of cashless payment transactions will have to be standardised (e.g. the diversity of account addressings, forms and tax regulations as well as the different fee practices of the banks). 

On the basis of the SEPA-regulations by the European Payment Council (EPC), factors will have to adapt their IT-systems as of January 1^st, 2008. The harmonisation of the international payment standards demands massive adjustments of the IT-landscape so that cross-border transferrals, debit advices and card transactions will match the SEPA-regulations in the future. 

Many of the payment systems that are implemented in the factoring industry are individual or legacy solutions and partly quite old. Therefore it will be a great effort to adapt the systems to the SEPA-standards. Since payment transactions are a mass business and consequently low costs per unit are of importance, an automated handling of the payments will be a relevant advantage in cost and competition. 

Once more fidis makes use of the enormously time and cost advantages resulting from the ERP-standard software SAP R/3 as basis for its own application FACT.pilot. The software house SAP has already fulfilled and successfully solved the SEPA-requirements. Afterwards fidis has implemented corresponding additional features into its own applications quickly and effortlessly.  

Our customers can settle back and concentrate on what is most important: Their path upwards!