SEPA: Meaning explained - and what are the benefits?

SEPA transfers have long been commonplace in today's banking. Business and private customers alike use the feature millions of times a day; however, many people are not even aware of the actual meaning of the term.

Transfer money across Europe: Thanks to SEPA, this can be done easily and quickly.

The SEPA credit transfer has been the standard in Germany and many other European countries for years. The advantages speak for themselves.

SEPA: meaning and practical advantages at a glance

SEPA is made up of the first letters of "Single Euro Payments Area".

• This is a single payments area with the aim of making cross-border transfers just as easy and fast as domestic money transfers.
• Currently, the 27 EU countries as well as the United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, Andorra, Vatican City and Switzerland belong to the SEPA community.
• Also in the course of unification, the old model consisting of bank code and account number was replaced by IBAN and BIC. Thanks to this system, all bank accounts in the SEPA area follow the same logic and this ensures a high level of user-friendliness.

It therefore does not matter for SEPA membership whether the respective countries have the euro as their main currency or not, so that transfers are simply carried out at the respective exchange rate, if necessary.