What about SEPA?

The card industry has always been a little but slow to evolve. There are a lot of money invested in the infrastructure and forces that don’t want to invest in changes in this infrastructure. Somehow the merchants have tolerated this during the years an just swallowed the cost (or passing it to their customers). This kind of behavior has kept the card payment fragmented and left without real IT-standards.

With SEPA and the increase of competition on all levels in Europe will force the card industry to standardizations of solutions. This will probably take some time and some regions will mature faste than other regions. The result will be fewer technical solutions that will cover a greater market and a restructure of the card fees. The merchants will benefit from the lower fees and also from the cost related to the technical service needed. Today there are huge differences on all levels between markets.