Our SEPA expert, shares his views on how SEPA Direct Debit management can take us one step closer to global payments efficiency.
• There will be 6 billion cell phone subscriptions in 2013.
• Roughly 85% of the world's population will be connected via mobile phone.
• Every day in 2007, there were twice as many cell phone users as in 1985
You might well be wondering why an article on the future of global payments, and, more specifically, an exploration of the role that SEPA direct debit management has to play in that future begins with some statistics on the explosion in mobile phone usage.
The reason is simple. Mobile phones have and will continue to transform the way we live, communicate and do business. Already, smart phones are bringing internet access to whole countries that have previously been cut off from the rest of the world.
For businesses, that means that it no longer makes sense to think of local markets or territories defined by geographical borders.
Google, Facebook and countless other dominant brands are - in the true sense of the word - global. Their business models rely just as much on usage and sales in one country as another.
Many years after Marshall McLuhan wrote his ground-breaking descriptions of how the globe would be contracted into a village by electric technology and predicted the World Wide Web 30 years before it became a reality, the world is catching up.
Now, it's time for businesses - and the payment and treasury systems that support cash management in the enterprise - to catch up.
In lots of ways, SEPA migration and the increased usage of SEPA direct debit management systems to efficiently send and receive payments throughout the Eurozone is the first step towards a new degree of global connectedness in the payments space.
Far from simply adding to the compliance burden of corporates, SEPA direct debit management offers a genuine way to efficiently broaden trade networks throughout Europe.
Since founding finical services company, I spend most of my time talking to businesses who know that their future growth depends on seizing hold of the opportunities that new markets offer. They want to expand into Europe and beyond but worry about the implications for managing multiple bank accounts and multiple payment mechanisms and they worry about the cost.
Now, SEPA direct debit management offers a way to send and receive payments right across the Eurozone at no extra cost. By removing national variations in payment fees, corporates can cut transaction costs and by introducing state of the art cash management and treasury systems at the same time, financial teams can use SEPA as the catalyst to get closer to their global cash position, optimizing cashflow as a result.
So, when it comes to payments we may not quite be a global village yet, but SEPA migration is certainly going to take us one step closer.
Ali Moiyed, A financial consultant and specialist in SEPA and SEPA Direct Debit Solution for the past two years. The benefits are so high and hassle-free that the direct debit collections are the best banking solution of all times.
