SEPA is not a bank and not a separate transfer system but a common set of rules under which a euro payment between countries of the area goes through just as it does inside one country. The laws are written by the EU institutions, the scheme rulebooks are run by the European Payments Council, and supervision rests with the ECB.
How long a transfer takes
An ordinary transfer must be delivered by the bank to the payee's bank within one banking day following acceptance of the instruction. Banking days are not the same as calendar days: an instruction submitted on Friday evening is executed on Monday. Hence the familiar “sent on Friday — arrived on Monday”.
For an instant transfer the limit is hard: 10 seconds by law, regardless of the hour and the calendar day. If confirmation has not arrived within that time, the payer's bank must immediately restore the account to its previous state — the money does not hang. Inside the scheme the deadlines are shorter: since 5 October 2025 they are 5, 7 and 9 seconds instead of the former 10, 20 and 25.
Why you are asked for an account in your own name
Since 9 October 2025 the payer's bank in the euro area must check the payee's name against the IBAN and show the result before the payment can be confirmed. There are several answers: match, no match, close match. The service is free and covers both kinds of transfer, not only the instant one.
The main consequence is written into the law: if the bank warned about a mismatch and the person confirmed the payment anyway, the bank is not liable for that transfer. There will be nobody to get the money back from. That is why an exchanger asks for an account made out in the same name as the order — otherwise “No Match” will light up on the payer's screen.
There is a rule the other way round too: if the bank did not carry out the check and because of that the payment went to the wrong place, it must refund the amount without delay. And a detail that is easy to miss: the bank is not obliged to report a match, so silence on the screen does not mean the check did not go through.
Limits on the amount
The scheme ceiling of €100,000 per instant transfer no longer exists — it was removed on 5 October 2025. What remains is the general limit of €999,999,999.99 and the bank's own limit, which it sets at its own discretion. In practice it is the bank's limit that decides, not the scheme rules.
Who is in the area and what the payee sees
SEPA has 41 countries: the 27 EU states, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, plus eleven countries outside the EEA — among them the United Kingdom and Switzerland. The caveat matters: EU law does not extend to them directly, so the European deadlines and the name check do not work the same way everywhere.
What reaches the payee is the payer's name, their IBAN, the amount and the payment reference — up to 140 characters, unchanged on the way. Beyond those 140 characters an ordinary transfer has an optional extended-information feature, and an instant one does not have it at all — count on 140 characters.