Experian warns that, although SEPA may have been designed to simplify and streamline processing operations for domestic and international payments, it will also expose out-of-date account data and other errors that were previously overcome through a patchwork of locally implemented fixes.

Their analysis showed that: more than half a million bank account records held by businesses around Europe, and 12% of electronic payments made to and from firms in euros currently contain data errors which could critically block the timely and cost-effective transfer of funds, when new SEPA legislation comes into effect in February 2014.

The research also showed that only 65% of euro transactions are underpinned by fully accurate destination account data, while 45% of new SEPA-compliant IBANS stored by large European businesses do not have the valid corresponding BICs required to enable successful completion of transactions.

Experian estimate that these error types will lead to payment failure when made through SEPA, costing businesses approximately EUR50 a time, leaving a total bill of more than EUR20 billion a year.

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The evidence is stacking up: SEPA migration is a nontrivial exercise and needs significant investment to minimise errors. Yes, I know Experian would say that, but this is yet more evidence that companies have to take SEPA migration seriously. The only issue is, whether to do this migration in-house, or use a service provider to do the migration and/or to process all SEPA payments, particularly SDD mandate management, in the longer term.