SEPA - Am I Missing Something?

ImDave

Hi,

So I have a Bank of Ireland Business A/C, and a Bank of Ireland Personal A/C. Before the introduction of SEPA, I could make a payment/transfer from my business account and the funds would appear instantly in my personal account and be available for use straight away.

Since moving to SEPA, the funds take about two hours to appear in my personal account, and don't clear for use for a number of hours afterwards. Example, yesterday I transferred money from the business a/c to the personal a/c at 11AM. They didn't appear in my personal a/c until about 2:30PM, and weren't cleared for use until some time around 9PM.

Has anyone else noticed this, or am I just doing something stupid? I know SEPA is more about integrating countries for international payments, but if it sets domestic payments back, it's a real pain.

EDIT: Apologies, didn't notice the thread on wage payments and SEPA. Probably same/related issue.

murphaph

Sounds like your bank doesn't know what it's at really. A transfer from one account to another within the same bank doesn't need to be SEPA at all. An internal transfer should still be immediate and if it isn't then the bank is doing something wrong IMO.

I just tested moving money from one account to another and it appears in the other account instantly. Interestingly the notice simply says "Your transfer was accepted" whereas if I do a transfer to an external account it will say "Your transfer fulfills the requirements of SEPA and will be carried out as a SEPA transaction" (translated-it's a German bank).

Contact your bank and ask them to rectify the situation.

KevHurley

No you're not missing anything. SEPA has set back payment times. BOI do not allow domestic transfers any longer so we must use SEPA. I love the spin BOI have on this. On their website they have all this crap about how SEPA has "enhanced" the online banking experience. For me so far, it has just caused hassle.

I have the same issue with payments from one BOI a/c to another. I also have employees calling me complaining that their wages are not being paid on time. It seems that each bank has different processing times for SEPA transactions. TSB seem to be the worst (no surprise there).

I called BOI today to query it and was told that they don't know when the system will get back to normal and I could expect payment delays for another few weeks.

I would love to know what the advantage of SEPA is. It seems to me it causes more problems than it solves.

murphaph

KevHurley wrote: »

No you're not missing anything. SEPA has set back payment times. BOI do not allow domestic transfers any longer so we must use SEPA. I love the spin BOI have on this. On their website they have all this crap about how SEPA has "enhanced" the online banking experience. For me so far, it has just caused hassle.

I have the same issue with payments from one BOI a/c to another. I also have employees calling me complaining that their wages are not being paid on time. It seems that each bank has different processing times for SEPA transactions. TSB seem to be the worst (no surprise there).

I called BOI today to query it and was told that they don't know when the system will get back to normal and I could expect payment delays for another few weeks.

I would love to know what the advantage of SEPA is. It seems to me it causes more problems than it solves.

As implemented by useless Irish banks.

My German bank is fully SEPA and I have noticed no delays with payments whatsoever.

As I said in my above post, a transfer from one account to another IN THE SAME BANK should not or does not need to follow the SEPA format. It is an internal transfer within the bank and I can transfer money instantly between accounts at my German bank, so the Irish banks are (as usual) taking the p!ss by using SEPA to transfer money internally within the bank. That was never the point of SEPA, which was to standardise payment formats across Europe.

The advantages of SEPA are obvious: you can make a payment in the same format now to millions of people in the world's largest trading bloc. You don't need multiple bank accounts in all the countries you operate in, one account is fine, even for direct debits and payment cards.

Anyway, the problems being experienced are not the fault of SEPA which is actually one of the best ideas ever to come from Brussels but rather the Irish banks' implementation of it, which seems lack lustre at best!

JTMan

Well said murphaph. SEPA is a huge leap forward for banking, really good European legislation.

ImDave

I realise that SEPA has many benefits in terms of standardisation etc. Having worked for a year in treasury for a multi-national a number of years ago, I remember how much of a pain it was trying to make payments to individuals and companies around the world.

Having said that, when you are used to something happening instantly, and all of a sudden it takes hours, that is not progress for me as an individual. I rely on making transfers from a business account to personal accounts on a regular basis for travel and business expenses etc. Whilst not the end of the world, it is a pain.

For me personally (and I am sure many others) SEPA boasts no benefit to my daily life as I have never had the need to make an international payment via bank transfer or direct debit. Yet, it has negatively impacted on my business banking. That said, this does seem to be more a BOI problem, as I have transferred funds from an AIB personal account to a 3rd party AIB account and it went through instantly. Hopefully BOI will get it sorted sooner rather than later. When that happens, I won't have any complains on SEPA. I'm all for process improvement, and SEPA is a good thing, just not if you are a BOI customer at the moment!

wmpdd3

On the same issue, I got a letter today from the DD section of the TV licence, stating that as part of SEPA, all PTSB DD were cancelled in error. I had to confirm or deny that I wished to cancel my DD by letter.

Seems more of a rough than a smooth transaction.

Also my wages are a day later hitting my account.

Yggr of Asgard

I'm with murphaph on this, transfers from my German bank account to my Irish bank account always show up the next day like clockwork (before and after SEPA) and their implementation is way better than what Irish banks have done.

For example I moved by UPC direct debit to my German account, this morning it showed up as pre-advise with a due date of 11 February, I know 7 days in advance when the direct debit is due. I can cancel or suspend it online with my bank. While PTSB allows me to suspend or cancel online too it does not provide me pre-advise of the debits.

Transfers between 2 different accounts with my German bank are instant (no delay) and even payments to their credit card division while not showing up on the online interface are same business day value and are available to spend seconds after the transfer. PTSB does same day value but only includes the amount in spend the next business day when it shows up online.

Not to mention that credit and debit card spends show up online when they are authorized with full details unlike in PTSB where its just shown in one big sum.

With SEPA I'm going to use my German bank account (which is free with free ATM withdraws worldwide) as my main account, however due to some Irish businesses not set up (seriously even with the extension to 1 August that is bad form) it will take a while to phase over.

Sure I have no branch available with my German bank account but I have 24/7 phone support which helps.

As to my Irish to Irish transfers, I stopped that month ago because with the German bank account I was sure it's there next day due to the Payment Regulations. So far nobody has complained to me that they did not get the money in time, in fact I noticed that payments to Tesco for example are credited faster than doing it with an Irish Bank Account.

I thinks, SEPA is a good example of EU regulations as it's going to open the EU market for bank customers and allows us to use the best bank service available EU wide.

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

Yggr of Asgard

wmpdd3 wrote: »

On the same issue, I got a letter today from the DD section of the TV licence, stating that as part of SEPA, all PTSB DD were cancelled in error. I had to confirm or deny that I wished to cancel my DD by letter.

Seems more of a rough than a smooth transaction.

Also my wages are a day later hitting my account.

I don't think they gave you correct info there, my state sponsored extortion racket of financing an bad excuse of public broadcasting did go out of my PTSB account today in SEPA form without a problem. You might want to check if this is genuine.

Now I'm going to call them again and ask them to convert it to my German account, something they refused last week because they were not ready. Which also seams to be wrong info because the DD was in the right format.