It has been the dream of the European Payments Council and the EU Commission for years: one EUR account and a single file format for making and collecting all payments in the 33 countries in the eurozone. Little bits of this dream now work, but most don’t. Experience of corporate treasury departments trying to use one EUR account and one file format across 33 countries in the eurozone is that:

- what works:

• collecting payments via SEPA Credit Transfer from businesses/consumers to one EUR account 

- what sort of works:

• SEPA Direct Debit cross-border to one account but little used as many corporates have had problems with cross-border and have just limited their SDD collections to a local in-country account 

- what doesn’t work:

• making payments via SCT: not able to pay in many countries, e.g. many countries (20?) have their own SEPA format - Finland, Baltics, etc., and countries use different reference number systems
• payroll payments: problems include some countries needing special flags
• paying taxes: authorities still demand payment from local accounts.

CTMfile take: We are still a very long way off making all payments and collections in a single format from one EUR account in the Eurozone. Nevertheless, already there are huge benefits on the collection side from using SEPA Credit Transfers, AND from SEPA opening up the opportunity to revise your payment and collection practices.