Financial institution and corporate clients of J.P. Morgan will be able to participate in both the core business-to-consumer and business-to-business schemes.

SEPA Direct Debit is the world's first pan-regional cross-border direct debit instrument and provides clients with a simple and cost-efficient way to collect high volume payments in Europe. The SDD offers many benefits to corporates including:

• greater control over collections as authorised SDD transactions are irrevocable
  
• guaranteed transmission of 140 characters of remittance information to help simplify and automate reconciliation processes
  
• the opportunity to rationalise the number of accounts in Europe which in turn will assist with management of liquidity.

J.P. Morgan clients making or receiving payments can domicile accounts in any of J.P. Morgan's European branches, and transaction activity can be monitored via the firm's online tool, J.P. Morgan ACCESSSM. J.P. Morgan's capabilities are ready a year before the deadline proposed by EU regulation on Cross Border Payments No. 924/2009, which requires Eurozone banks to offer payments via SDD to their clients by November 1st, 2010.

"J.P. Morgan has supported SEPA as an initiative to standardise payables and receivables in Europe, and the SEPA Direct Debit is the next logical step in its evolution. As all Eurozone banks will be reachable by SDD by late 2010, corporates can now start preparing to reap the benefits of this new payment instrument which will help centralise and standardise high volumes of collections," said Alex Caviezel, head of J.P. Morgan Treasury Services in Europe, Middle East and Africa. "SDD adoption will result in process efficiencies which should boost competitiveness in today's challenging markets. J.P. Morgan has seen a great deal of interest in this service from clients in recent months, and we expect that to continue as SEPA continues to build momentum."tum."