There is plenty of debate at the moment about the actual services that will be offered by banks as SEPA becomes widely used across the EU. Many are predicting price reductions and a new age of more efficient cheaper services by banks. How realistic is it to expect a new offering from participating banks and the lower prices expected in the short term?

Presumably the cost reductions for the corporates will come from operational cost savings but what happens if the revenue reductions expected at the banks act as a counter balance? There can be a discussion on the apportionment of cost reductions at a later stage. Let’s get there first! Anyway the banking business for payments is going to get far more competitive post SEPA and it is certain that good deals will abound.

If the banks are to provide corporates and retail customers with enhanced service offerings at a much cheaper processing cost there has to be a more cooperative attack on the mass of issues concerning missing standards . The corporates have not been involved as much as they should have when agreeing communication standards. They clearly will not engage in heavy technology developments for what they perceive as a banking issue. However, the software vendors may have a different appeal if the software has values extending beyond SEPA. This might be a method of getting the banks and the corporates into a unified position to agree the best standards.

Software vendors have already moved beyond the current industry debate concerning SEPA implementation, where banking concerns are around a shift in the commercial model and the information details for communication and whose responsibility, Corporates or banks. ACI’s Paul Styles sums up the situation “As the focus moves to the migration of the banks’ customer base to the SEPA instruments, the full integration of the bank’s front-end solution with the bank back office will deliver visible value add directly to the client in a number of ways. ACI, with its extensive suite of solutions, is uniquely positioned to partner with all stakeholders in the payments process to ensure these benefits are delivered, now and into the future.”

ACI as one of the leading software houses in the market, producing SEPA solutions, could easily engage their banking customers and their corporates and become a catalyst in getting and agreeing the best approach to adopting communication standards. It sometimes takes a vendor to see the best solutions and the path to achieving them and there is no doubt ACI as a one of the principals in payments systems solutions has the intellectual capability to assist the industry to see and achieve its objectives. With the ACI competence to innovate and provide technology that is already SEPA able they need to be “included in” by the payments industry. ACI Paul Styles says ”To deliver the vision of SEPA, the payments industry has to work as a community which comprises the banks, the market infrastructures, the end user and the vendors. With our expertise in EMV and long experience in electronic payments, both wholesale and retail, ACI stands ready to ensure the European payments industry remains at the forefront of innovation.”   

The implementation of ISO20022 and XML based solutions is not a technical concern as no new developments are necessary just an agreement between parties concerned.