The "Single Euro Payments Area" (SEPA) creates a single European market for payment instruments. The aim of SEPA is to enable payments to be made and received within Europe as efficiently and easily as if the transactions were being carried out within a single country.
Therefore standards are being drawn up for the whole SEPA area for the three main payment instruments (credit transfers, direct debits and card payments). Moreover, the same legislation will apply to all the countries involved. In total, there are 34 countries in the SEPA area. These are the existing 28 EU member states of the European Union, together with Iceland, Lichtenstein, Monaco, Norway, San Marino and Switzerland.
Since the 31st of March 2014, edpnet migrated her existing direct debit system to SEPA. Please note that there is no action required for active direct debits. The migration is fully automated. For new direct debit requests, changes or cancellations of direct debits, you will need to contact edpnet instead of your bank. If you want to have full details about SEPA, you can visit the website of the National Bank of Belgium www.nbb.be or sepabelgium.be (only available in Dutch and French).