Posts Tagged ‘bank’
Tieto, one of Europe’s leading e-invoicing vendors has, in corporation with Gartner Research, produced a document about the future of e-invoicing in Europe. In this document, specialists and representatives of EU Working Group for e-invoicing, the Tieto Board and the banking world speak out their opinion on the future of e-invoicing and the challenges that have to be conquered, reasons to swith to e-invoicing, a description of the current landscape and many other aspects attached to this fast growing subject.
The publication examines the development of the European e-invoicing framework. The public sector and corporations have begun to realize the benefits of moving away from manual paper invoicing. Cost-savings from B2B invoicing withing services and manufacturing have proven to typically amount to 1% of a company’s revenue.
The Netherlands Bankers’ Association (NVB) is preparing for the introduction of the Single Euro Payments Area (Sepa) with the introduction of a new nationwide Iban (International Bank Account Number) and BIC (Bank Identifier Code) look-up service for all Dutch citizens and corporates.
The introduction of the new tool is expected to speed compliance with Sepa by offering a single, co-ordinated system for BIC and Iban conversion that all Dutch banks can roll out to their account holders.
Users can request the correct Iban and BIC information using an online web service, the telephone via a voice response system or via an SMS message. A dedicated corporate Web service allows Dutch businesses to update batch files of Bbans (Basic Bank Account Numbers) with the correct corresponding Ibans and BICs for Sepa compliance.
The system was developed by Experian and commissioned by the Foundation Iban Service NL, on behalf of the Dutch banking community.
The introduction of the new coding has been identified as a potential stumbling block to Sepa uptake among European citizens and businesses.
Jim Conning, managing director, Experian Payments, comments: “We…have the European footprint to provide similar services to other EU banking communities who want to facilitate the move to Sepa payments smoothly”.
Source: sibosonline.com
Via this website, consumers and businesses receive information about the benefits of sending bills digitally. Moreover, customers of ABN AMRO, ING and Rabobank ViaMijnBank are able to receive their invoices online, and pay online through their own secured banking environment.
In his speech at the launch of the website, Heemskerk pointed out the benefits of sending invoices digitally. Together with Marco Pastors (the government’s ambassador for e-invoicing ) Heemskerk aims for the government to receive and process 10 percent of all invoices electronically in 2010. “This will save businesses and tax payers a lot of money. Soon we will make these arrangements official by signing an agreement with national union VNO-NCW, MKB (SME) Nederland and the main government parties that send a lot of invoices,” the Secretary announced.
Besides the importance of e-invoicing, Heemskerk stressed the importance of innovation in services in general. “With this kind of initiatives, the banks show that they play a leading role when it comes to the use of ICT.” In other parts of the national services there is much profit to make. In general, productivity in the Dutch services is growing slowly. This has a negative effect on the competitiveness of this sector, particularly concerning the current crisis. A closer look is currently taken at this situation to unveil the cause of this backlog. The Ministry of Economic Affairs also helps sectors to digitize their activities by implementing the program ‘The Netherlands Connected Digitally’ (www.ndiv.nl).
The Dutch banks have composed a standard message for the customer initiation of a European bank transfer. This allows business and IT customers and / or ERP providers to a set up a generic and correct SCT UNIFI / XML message supported by the Dutch banks.
Read the ‘SEPA Credit Transfer XML customer-to-bank Implementation Guidelines for the Netherlands’
The initiating group ‘SEPA Migration NL’ have also come up with the Dutch Implementation Guidelines set to create a ‘level playing field’ for their corporate customers and software vendors active in SEPA.
The Dutch Association of Banks strongly recommends the use of the Dutch bank-customer SCT Implementation Guidelines to banks and their corporate clients.
The use of the Dutch Implementation Guidelines does not exclude the use of Belgian or other Implementation Guidelines. A bank can make additional appointments with its customers.
The new bank-client standards will replace the existing, because they do not meet all the SEPA requirements. Thus, BIC and IBAN cannot be used.
Source: www.sepanl.nl
One of Austria’s leading retail banks, BAWAG, is taking part in a Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Direct Debit (DD) pilot, scheme operated by the payments specialist VocaLink.
The bank will benefit from a broad range of services, prior to the launch of SEPA DD payments in November 2009, including a payments capture process which removes the need for unnecessary intervention by directly recording clients’ payments. It is hoped the pilot, introduced in Q1 2009, will assist migration and cut infrastructure and development costs.
A management module that can centralise critical mandate information on behalf of the bank and its clients is a key component of the installation. The pilot is intended to ease the migration towards a SEPA-compliant infrastructure.
Commenting on the pilot, Joseph Laughlin, a member of the management board at BAWAG, said: “The initiative will demonstrate to our corporate customers that the bank is ahead of the market. The value-added services, such as payments capture, validation, mandate management and exceptions management, will make a real impact with our customers.
Source: fstech.co.uk
Nearly 30% of individuals use internet banking, 60% of households have internet access.
In the EU27, 60% of households had access to the internet during the first quarter of 2008, compared with 54% during the first quarter of 2007, and 48% had a broadband internet connection, compared with 42% in 2007.
These data published by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, represent only a small part of the results of a survey on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) usage in households and by individuals in the EU27 Member States plus Norway, Iceland and Croatia. As well as internet use and broadband connections, the survey also covers other indicators such as e-shopping, e-government and advanced communication and content related services.
Household internet access ranges from 25% in Bulgaria to 86% in the Netherlands
In 2008, the proportion of households with internet access was three quarters or more in the Netherlands (86%), Sweden (84%), Denmark (82%), Luxembourg (80%) and Germany (75%). The lowest levels were registered in Bulgaria (25%), Romania (30%) and Greece (31%).
The proportion of households with a broadband connection in 2008 was also highest in the Netherlands and Denmark (both 74%) and Sweden (71%).
One third of individuals in the EU27 use travel related internet services
In the second quarter of 2008, individuals aged 16-74 in the EU Member States were asked which activities they had carried out on the internet in the previous three months. In the EU27, nearly a third of all individuals had used internet for travel and accommodation services. Around 30% had used internet banking, interacted with public authorities or searched for health-related information. About a quarter had read online news or ordered goods or services. Around 15% had looked for jobs or sent applications by internet.
The Member States which had the highest proportions of individuals performing these internet activities were the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Luxembourg.
Here you are able to view the entire data overview per country:
Source: Eurostat
French banks have suspended the launch of new pan-European payment services due to confusion over tariffs in the latest setback for a key EU project to improve consumer choice and boost growth.
The European Union has plans for a single euro payments system or SEPA to give its 495 million consumers cheap payments of bills and purchases in euros from a single bank account. The move is designed to encourage cross-border competition and spur the creation of jobs and growth, the EU’s executive European Commission has said.
The project requires the bloc’s 8,000 banks to invest billions of euros changing their systems to comply with common SEPA standards on credit transfers, direct debits and payment cards. SEPA-compliant credit transfers were launched in January by banks across the EU but the French Banking Federation (FBF) said on Thursday its members have suspended work pending clarification from European authorities on tariffs, in particular charging for services that banks supply to each other, it said in a statement.
‘As long as these rules are not clarified, the French banks, like many European banks, cannot start the work on the timetable because like all businesses, banks need to know their economic and legal risks,’ the statement said.
Banks across the EU are worrying how the new services would be paid for after last December when the Commission said MasterCard’s interchange fee on its cross-border credit cards and Maestro direct debit cards violated EU competition rules.
The interchange fee is charged to retailers for processing a card payment but retailers have dubbed it a tax on consumers. MasterCard is appealing the decision, a process that will take months but the November 2009 deadline for a full switch to SEPA products in Europe is looming.
The Commission and the European Central Bank has said banks could use an interchange fee on direct debits but only for an ‘interim period’ and if it was justified — a move that banks say has ‘destabilised’ their planned SEPA business models.
Source: www.reuters.com
In a survey of the top 50 MT 103 banks, Swift found that 28 of the 29 banks that responded already offer or plan to offer B2B e-invoicing services.
In the corporate market, banks see potential for generating additional revenue by integrating e-invoicing with existing cash management, supply chain and financing services.
However, in the absence of widely accepted standards. many see their projects as long-range efforts, with an average estimated five year payback in terms of return on investment.
Swift says its potential involvement in the market was welcomed by approximately three-quarters of the banks surveyed.
The Euro Banking Association and an EU Commission Expert group are currently researching the market for e-invoicing and the potential for wider banking industry involvement.
Swift says it will await the findings of both these efforts before setting up its own Ad Hoc advisory group. This would seek to set out and test a business case for an interoperable e-invoicing platform, and identify the key functionality and the role of Swift and other parties in the provision of this capability.
Source: www.finextra.com
In 2007 the Danish National IT & Telecom Agency (NITA) launched a national open e-business framework ‘NemHandel’ (literally ‘EasyTrade’), based on a new national service-oriented infrastructure and utilizing state-of-the-art open standards to do e-business transactions business to government and business to business via the internet. The national open e-business framework supports reliable, secure and asynchronous exchange of business messages, e.g. invoices, across heterogeneous networks, including the internet.
Since 2005 suppliers to the Danish public sector have been required by law to send invoices electronically, which affects approximately 70% of all Danish businesses, and thus electronic invoicing in the public sector is a key driver for the initiative. However the ‘NemHandel’ initiative also aims more widely in a business-to-business context to replace less cost-effective solutions, such as the scanning-based digitalisation of paper invoices, as well as to pave the way for more comprehensive digitisation of a range of e-business processes to reduce administrative burdens in Danish businesses. Please see the Danish eInvoice Solution.
As part of the ‘NemHandel’ initiative, NITA has developed a basic open source ‘NemHandel’ application for the exchange of e-business documents, e.g. electronic invoices, via the internet. The open source application is freely available through the ‘Softwarebørsen’ open source software exchange to public sector institutions, private businesses, and to IT vendors who may incorporate the technology in their own commercial products. A number of commercial IT vendors have already and others are in the process of integrating the ‘NemHandel’ technology into their products so that documents may be exchanged directly between existing IT solutions. Likewise a range of existing commercial service providers, e.g. banks and operators of value added networks (VAN) and other proprietary solutions, are looking to connect their individual networks to the NemHandel infrastructure.
Read more on epractice
A recent study looking to identify possible benefits for corporate financial service providers in the aftermath of SEPA implementation marks the existence of two separate approaches banks can implement in order to recoup SEPA-related investments and generate additional revenues: electronic invoicing and supply chain financing.
The study points out that SEPA compliance has exerted a high toll on financial institutions, all the more so since SEPA provisions actually cut back on banks’ payment revenues by stipulating that cross-border payment fee levels should match those of domestic transactions fees. As a result, the study claims, banks need to come up with alternate strategies to compensate for lost payment revenues. The answer, the research points out, could lie in the so-called ‘value-added’ services such as cross-border electronic invoicing and supply chain financing.
Electronic invoicing comes with a series of benefits ranging from process savings to lower fraud and credit risks, faster payments and improved cash flow, lower IT costs due to standardised invoicing, payments and account interfaces and higher productivity. As a result, the study points out that e-invoicing could hold the key to a higher degree of corporate profitability within SEPA and pave the way for another profit-generating value-added service, namely supply chain automation. The latter renders banks more aware of their customers’ own financial processes and cash flows, allowing them to extend credit facilities to their corporate customers and build additional revenues.
The research was conducted by IT service provider TietoEnator.
Source: Tietoenator
![[Discussion] 7 facts and myths about PDF invoices](../../../../img/_einvoice-230x200_w_80_zc_1_a_c_h_45_w_45_zc_1.png){kind=small}
