“Europe kind of jumped the gun by introducing the euro,” said Dominic McGough, marketing director of global freight audit, payment and logistics management firm nVision Global's European Operations. “The banking system wasn't equipped to handle it,” he points out.
The ultimate benefit for global supply chains is that payments in euros can be made or received within the European Union in exactly the same way as domestic payments. “Even though we're handling euros in Belgium and euros in Holland,” said McGough, “transfers between the two countries of more than €50,000 were still classified as an international transaction and bank charges had to be paid on the transaction.”
SEPA provides the ability to move funds across countries and across borders in a seamless environment, comments McGough.
The 1957 Treaty of Rome setting forth the principles of what has evolved in the European Union stated that among its central principles was “an internal market characterized by the abolition, as between Member States, of obstacles to the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital.”