European Central Bank - Towards SEPA

The SEPA for cards aims to move the domestic service from the national level to the euro area level. As a result, the ultimate objective of the SEPA project in this field is to facilitate the development of the instrument, from the point of view of both supply (banks) and demand (cardholders, merchants), across the euro area, without any differentiation within the SEPA between national and cross-border payments.

With a national (debit) card today, cardholders are able to pay all over the country, with no geographical restriction. With a domestic card in the future, cardholders should be able to pay all over the euro area.

As a result, national card schemes have to find a way of expanding their acceptance networks to the whole euro area. Any cardholder should be able to use his or her card at any automated teller machine (ATM) or point of sale (POS) (as long as the bank or the merchant accepts the type of card/brand in question), at a reasonable cost and without differentiation based on the country of issue of the card. A merchant should be able to choose to deal with any acquiring bank located in any country within the euro area.