EACHA

Reachability is critical to the success of SEPA. However it is evident that individual banks and CSMs will not be able to create reachability across Europe on their own. By sharing reach among CSMs full reachability in Europe is easily achieved without affecting the level playing field. Competing CSMs work together in creating the necessary infrastructure for a thriving SEPA by exchanging reach, but competing on their service offering and pricing.

For this purpose, the CSMs have founded EACHA – the European Automated Clearing House Association. This association has developed a standard that enables standardised SEPA interoperability between banks and CSMs. EACHA itself will not perform any commercial or operational role in payments processing, but is the platform were infrastructures can discuss interoperability.

Major benefits of CSM interoperability for banks

• Ease of choice: no need for proprietary interfaces with several CSMs and easy link to CSMs of choice, at comparatively low costs.
• Straight Through Processing (STP) of payments over the entire value chain (end-to-end).
• Boosts competition by creating a level playing field through same conditions for every participant.

Download our white paper with more information about members, approach and benefits of this special collaboration between competitors.