Published by Lafferty Group, November 2, 2010
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
It is said the first phase of the Southern African project, which will be led by the South African Reserve Bank, will seek to integrate the existing bank and payments infrastructure across South Africa, Namibia, Swaziland and Lesotho. This is expected to take up to two years and the scheme will eventually be spread further afield.
Tim Masela from the South African Reserve Bank has reportedly said that learning from the SEPA experience in Europe is very useful, particularly in the area of legal frameworks.
Commenting on the reported plans for a Southern African version of SEPA, Paul Love, a solutions consultant at ACI Worldwide, said such an initiative could potentially spread South Africa’s prosperity to its neighboring countries if they are able to trade more effectively with each other.
Love said: “In effect what the countries want to do is grow a regional economy, as what they have got now is a one-country economy and lots of regional players who are piggy-backing on the back of that. What the countries need to do is concentrate on getting the banks talking to each other, but they cannot afford to take the time that the Europeans have done. In anything they do, the Southern African countries really should enforce the initiative with mandates and make sure that changes will happen.”
Love's comments come after the European Central Bank (ECB) recently said the banking industry’s self-imposed deadline of December 2010 for SEPA credit transfers and direct debits to be in general use will not be met. Consequently, the ECB wants the transition to SEPA to be completed by the end of 2012 for credit transfers, and by the end of 2013 for direct debits.
In January 2008, more than 4,300 banks, in 32 countries in Europe representing roughly 95 percent of payment volumes, took a first step to starting SEPA by launching the SEPA Credit Transfer Scheme (SCT) for euro payments.
In November 2009, the European Payments Council (EPC) launched the SEPA Core Direct Debit Scheme (SDD) and the SEPA Business to Business Direct Debit Scheme (B2B).
Speaking to Lafferty Cards Insider in May 2010, Gerard Hartsink, chairman of the European Payments Council, said of those banks signed up to the direct debit schemes, 2,500 offer core SDD services and 2,375 offer SDD B2B services.
Given the proliferation of mobile phones and related service levels throughout the EU, the mobile channel is also considered an ideal launch pad for SEPA payment instruments. As a result, the EPC and the GSMA, which represents the worldwide mobile communications industry, have published a joint paper designed to expedite the deployment of mobile contactless payments around the world.