SEPA for Cash

Single Euro Cash Area (SECA)

The current landscape for the distribution of cash is characterised by multiple national infrastructures each organised at a national level and based on different business models.  This lack of harmonisation, common approach and best practice increases the cost of cash processing and creates many inefficiencies across the euro zone.  For retail cash, banks, merchants, public authorities and transport organisations are all finding it difficult to handle any additional volume of cash.

Given this background, the EPC believes that actions by all stakeholders within the euro area could contribute to reduce the high cost of processing and handling cash.  To this end, it has been agreed to create the Single Euro Cash Area (SECA).

The plans for the SECA have been developed in close consultation with the Eurosystem Banknote Committee, banks and other key players.  The objective of SECA is to create, with the Eurosytem, a level playing field whereby the basic cash functions performed by each of the National Central Banks (NCBs) in the euro area are interchangeable, e.g. there is a common level of service and common processes are followed by all euro area NCBs.

SECA will support one major goal of the SEPA initiative: encouraging consumers and merchants to migrate from cash to payment cards and other electronic payment instruments.

Improving Cash Processing

In addition, the EPC developed recommendations with a view to creating a common euro-wide infrastructure for wholesale cash based on the following principles:

• The development of common security requirements for euro note transportation, including standards for bank note neutralisation systems.
• The identification of best practice standards for coin and banknote packaging including bundle types (content, single or multiple denomination countries, packaging and procedures for returning counterfeits and stained banknotes).  These standards should also include harmonisation of processes across national markets and banknote standard packages compatible with cash degradation systems.

* Retail Banking Research (RBR): The Future of Cash and Payments (2010)