Thomas Wolpert of UTA, a transport services provider operating throughout Europe, describes how their single euro payments area (SEPA) Direct Debit (SDD) implementation programme began in 2010 and is now all ready for the launch date. The UTA service card allows for the cashless settlement of vehicle costs, such as diesel, tolls, and breakdowns, in 37 European countries, so moving to a continent-wide uniform direct debit system has had huge benefits for the company.

The article describes the SEPA B2B implementation process, how they smoothed out the glitches, and the benefits and pitfalls of an SDD project.

Wolpert's conclusions are interesting, particularly the conclusion that "we still have the national direct debit systems running in parallel so at this stage it's too early to make any judgements about the real benefits of the SDD (B2B), but we expect to gain definite efficiency benefits."

Not surprisingly, he recommends that companies address the topic of SEPA as soon as possible and start the implementation.

Read more in the full article here.