https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/integration/retail/instant_pa...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area
https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/PYMNTS-Rea...
- sending money (P2P, P2B, B2B) often requires manually entering a IBAN in your banking app/website (_except in some countries_, and some systems on top of it can also reduce the friction) which is okay for many P2P use cases but not good for physical shop checkout P2B use case or ad hoc bill sharing use case in P2P (also compared to some other solutions this often comes with less consumer protections)
- doesn't interface (well) with the card payment/payment terminal ecosystem (but technically can and you do find it in some edge cases)
- fast (in seconds) payment cost extra and price is bank/country dependent (through in some countries it's free or consistently "cheap" e.g. a fixed 15ct(€) independent of amount and recipient)
but this is likely too change, some countries have already put up standards for more convenient P2P (and P2B??) payment methods and they seem to be in the process of being adapted EU wide (but not necessary UK and other non EU SEPA members)
in addition there are standardized interfaces for 3rd parties companies to link up with SEPA and/or you bank account which do technically allow companies to innovate on improvements. Practically this often runs into issues, 1) from a consumer POV in many (not all) EU countries the state of card payment is just fine and convenient features like easy bill sharing many people either don't need or don't know what they miss out on. 2) many issues are on the (physical) shop side, but you need to provide things users can use and having multiple systems in parallel is often not very practical, 3) at the same time without shops allowing new systems customer don't have any reason to adapt such new systems
anyway all of this likely will improve quite a bit relatively soon
The UX of SEPA is lacking in comparison to other modern payment systems for sure. I'm confident though, that it will improve soon. Wero [1] seems like a decent start and appears to be gaining traction lately. It's basically a layer on top of SEPA Instant payment with extra features and a decent app based UI/UX.
Banking apps can also generate a QR code for receiving payments.
They are not quite as seamless as tap-to-pay, but they work with pretty much every bank in the Austria, which is neat.
We pay 2.50 EUR for a SEPA transfer, it's ridiculously expensive.
We need local integrations for every market to cut costs.
Usually SEPA payments are completely free for consumers. And I believe there’s a EU-mandated fee cap which is much less than 2.50 €. But if you have a business account, things are different.
We clearly need to look into other banks.