I have written evidence that some of Europe's largest Corporates have expressed a number of serious issues to the EPC where SEPA is failing and in danger of deteriorating to a simple Bank to Bank system. But a picture has been presented in the media that SEPA is on course to achieving its end objectives at some stage in the future; however, the documents I have seen show conclusively that this remains in considerable doubt.

One of the highlighted areas of concern with large Corporates is the proliferation of SEPA XML formats. This is perceived as a negative development as the expectation was that the Corporate to Bank communication would become a standard but already many countries are adopting different versions. The result is confusion by the Corporates and requires significant effort and cost by them to comply with SEPA formats.

The upshot is that the Corporates are now very concerned that SEPA will not be delivering one of its key objectives namely one unique format across the whole of Europe.  According to many of Europe's major Corporates there are will be significant overhead costs incurred under the existing SEPA design that will escalate further if a multiple country format exists.

The fear of the Corporates is that the existing design of SEPA is limited and this will restrict the attraction of the majority of corporate users.

This is just one of the major SEPA issues that Corporates are still debating with the EPC and it has to bring huge doubt on the eventual scope of possible success for SEPA. All the Corporates are based in Europe and so please don't shoot the messenger for highlighting only one of the concerns that still needs resolving before SEPA can be truly considered on the path to success!