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The Single Euro Payments Area's direct-debit mandates are scheduled to go into effect in November, but SEPA will not succeed unless merchants and other underrepresented parties have more input into its governance, the Payment System End-Users Committee said in a statement released yesterday. "It really has been the banking sector that has been guiding SEPA," Ruth Milligan, legal advisor on payment systems for EuroCommerce, a European merchant trade group, tells CardLine Global. The end-users committee, which includes EuroCommerce, Business Europe, the European Association of Corporate Treasurers and other national organizations, would prefer SEPA's governance come under a steering committee that includes "the banking community but also the user community to make policy decisions about SEPA in the future," Milligan says. The end-users committee also released a position paper on SEPA's direct-debit goals. Among its complaints is that the direct-debit scheme proposed by the European Payments Council offers fewer services than do existing national schemes, which means "end users will have little incentive to change over to the new system under these conditions," according to the committee's statement. The committee proposes instead a basic service with the option of adding on tailored direct-debit payment services available at extra cost to users.
