• Single Euro Payments Area

• Single Euro Payments Area
• Single Euro Payments Area

Single Euro Payments Area

With a view to offering favourable conditions for international payment order execution to its clients, Ūkio bankas along with other Europe’s banks, supports the development of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). SEPA is an area where private and corporate clients of the European banks, regardless of their location, may send and receive domestic and cross-border euro payments under the same conditions, rights and obligations.

SEPA provides the possibility of making payments in non-cash euro among bank accounts and using single payment instruments. SEPA covers credit transfers, direct debit transfers and card payments. SEPA payment instruments are accessible throughout the countries having joined this initiative and therefore clients will need only one bank account and, in addition, it will be possible to use the same payment card to execute all payments in euro across the euro area. Uniform requirements, transparent service fees and money transfer time-limits will ensure a transparent and straightforward payment processing. When making SEPA credit transfers the payment value is not limited and the total payment amount reaches the reciepint no later than within 3 business days. IBAN and the bank identification code BIC are used for account identification.

SEPA covers all European Union Member States, as well as Norway, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Monaco, and Switzerland.

SEPA’s principal aim is to encourage the European integration by creating a competitive and up-to-date retail payment market of the euro area ensuring a higher level of services, more advanced instruments and cheaper methods of making payments.

The major part of incoming and outgoing credit euro payments of Ūkio bankas clients are SEPA payments. At the end of the year, Ūkio bankas will provide conditions for its clients to submit and receive SEPA payments using the format XML allowing the clients to specify and transfer to the recipient more information compared to the currently used formats. This will allow Ūkio bankas clients to take advantage of all the new opportunities relating with SEPA credit payments. Ūkio bankas renders up-to-date and efficient payment services to its clients and provides possibilities for easier integration into the international market.