The idea of SEPA

SEPA is the Single Euro Payments Area. SEPA harmonises the way we make and process payments in euro. SEPA enables customers to make cashless euro payments to anyone located anywhere in Europe, using a single payment account and a single set of payment instruments

If you travel from one euro area country to another, you can easily buy something with euro cash. But paying cashless outside your home country, for example with a card, is more difficult. This is due to technical, legal and market barriers stemming from the time before the single currency. SEPA aims to overcome these barriers. The result will be a single market for payments in euro. This single market will reach beyond the euro area and even the European Union.

> Overview document: The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA): an integrated retail payments market
> Detailed SEPA information on the ECB website

The idea of SEPA What is eSEPA? Types of eSEPA services European initiatives
bank card cash commission consumers debit european fees future internet invoicing mobile online policy retail sepa services study survey transactions

What's new?

Green paper on card, internet and mobile - consultation by the European Commission

"This Green Paper assesses the current landscape of card, internet and mobile payments in Europe, identifies the gaps between the current situation and the vision of a fully integrated payments market and the barriers which have created these gaps. The objective of the Green Paper is to launch a broad consultation process with stakeholders to validate or contribute to the Commission’s analysis and to help identify the right way to improve market integration."
From the press release by the European Commission on 11 January 2012

Based on the Green Paper, a consultation was adopted on 11 January 2012. The purpose "is to collect information from all interested stakeholders on the existing situation of the card, internet and mobile payments market and the potential hurdles for integration at European level in these markets."
The deadline for submitting contributions to the consultation is 11 April 2012.

Link to European Commission's web page on card, internet and mobile payments:
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/payments/cim/index_en.htm

eSEPA 1.0.3 - (C) 2011 European Central Bank