THE SINGLE PAYMENTS AREA IN EUROPE


16 Colum. J. Eur. L. 321 (2010)

Agnieszka Janczuk, LLM, PhD Candidate, European University Institute.

Recent legislative developments in the field of payment services in the European Union aim at building a uniform European payments market. The creation of an internal market for payments has been the result of both industry self-regulation and public regulation. The Payment Services Directive (PSD) and Regulation 924/2009 support and complement the private regulatory regime developed by the banking sector’s European Payments Council, the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). The PSD provides a legal framework for SEPA by harmonizing certain core payments provisions, while Regulation 924/2009 substantially enabled the launch of SEPA Direct Debit by laying down the principle of “reachability” for cross-border direct debit payments and by regulating multilateral interchange fees in direct debit transactions. This Note describes in further detail the PSD, Regulation 924/2009, and their relation to SEPA.