The RBA, a non-profit professional body with its own legal identity, was formed in 1991 by 14 commercial banks to facilitate communication and the sharing of experiences and best practice across the banking system. There are now 40 RBA members. In addition to the Romanian Banks, these include credit institutions and the branches of some foreign banks.

The main goals of the RBA are to represent and defend its members' interests, to promote the principles of banking policy in domains of general interest for its members, to promote cooperation among banks and with national and international institutions and banking associations from other countries, to train experts in the banking system, and to communicate with the mass media.

In order to comply with the National Bank of Romania's (NBR) norms and working regulations, as well as with international rules and practices, the RBA hosts expert groups tasked to find common solutions to problems affecting the banking system. This allows the development and standardisation of best practices relating to the provision of banking services and products, and facilitates industry relationships with regulators and other government bodies.

In addition to Romania, EAST has national representation from the following 25 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom. EAST is still seeking national representative members from: Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovenia.

Both Canada and Russia are represented at EAST as non-SEPA members and EAST is seeking to establish links with parties in any country, able to share national incident and loss statistics for ATM related fraud and physical attacks.