Whilst preparing for the rapidly approaching SEPA end-date for Finland, it might be easy to forget about the great cost savings and the immediate benefits that will follow as a SEPA compliant company. If you do start thinking about the time and resources needed to execute the necessary changes - it might be wise to consider the following figures.

Some figures of interest about the SEPA area.

• 32 member states
• 500 million people
• 25 million businesses
• 25 official languages
• 15 currencies
• 9000 banks
• Around 200 commercial payment instruments
• 70 billion electronic transactions

My guess is that a harmonisation in the payment area should be welcomed by most European stakeholders.

In Finland, the companies that have not yet upgraded their solutions for file transfers to banks are in a hurry to meet the end-date 31 October. At the same time, the European Council and European Commission are preparing the decision of end date for the rest of Europe. The voting in Parliament is expected to take place in October. The expectations are that the end-date will be early 2013 for credit transfers and early 2014 for direct debits. If the decision is that there will only be one end-date that will most probably be early 2014.

So for everyone busy setting agendas for next year's projects, don't forget to add the SEPA transition and remember that the entire idea with SEPA is to make the payments more efficient and less costly.