James Hatcher, managing director of Seeburger Asia Pacific, feels that SEPA offers a unique opportunity for treasurers in Asia to implement more efficient payments practices.
August 14, 2013 | James HatcherThe increased trade between Asia and Europe is driving payment activities between banks within these two markets. To alleviate the security issue while at the same time to increase pan-European competition in the payment industry, the Payment Services Directive (PSD) has been introduced as law across the European Union (EU) since 1 November 2009.
Banking is now truly global and yet security risks for fraudulent financial activities and hacking to cull personal and private corporate information are at an all-time high. All financial institutions that participate in international trade need to be aware of the proper security standards and global compliance regulations.
In a nutshell, the PSD constitutes the legal framework basis for the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) that regulates payment services and payment service providers throughout the EU and European Economic Area (EEA). It defines the harmonisation of payment products, infrastructures and technical standards. In the long-term, the uniform SEPA payment instruments are expected to replace national Euro payment systems now being operated in Europe.
SEPA aims to provide for a level playing field by harmonising consumer protection, and the rights and obligations for payment providers and users; and is an area where citizens, companies and other economic participants make and receive payments in Euro, whether between or within national boundaries, under the same basic conditions, rights and obligations.
Indeed, the SEPA Credit Transfers (SCT’s) are already being adopted and used amongst the payments community in the Eurozone widely. In the other hand, as we are aware of, today’s usage of SEPA Direct Debits (SDD’s) are boosting up quickly as well as to ensure the compliance with the previsions of the SDD Core scheme is ready by 1 Feb 2014 for countries in the Eurozone.
Subsequently, all bank entities and payment service providers in non-Euro countries, including the...
Categories:
Operational Risk & Security, Payments, Regulation, Risk and Regulation, Technology & Operations, Transaction BankingKeywords:James Hatcher, Seeburger, SEPA, EU, EEA, PSD, SDD, SCT, European Payments Council, MAS
