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(7) It is essential to avoid unnecessary disruption of payments resulting from the fact that SEPA migration is not fully completed by 1 February 2014. Payment service providers should therefore be allowed, for a limited period of time, to continue the processing of payment transactions through their legacy schemes alongside their SCT and SDD schemes, as they are doing now. A transitional period should therefore be introduced to allow for the continuation of such parallel processing of payments in different formats. Considering the current migration figures and the expected pace of migration, a one-off additional transitional period of six months is appropriate. Such ‘grandfathering’ of non-SEPA compliant legacy systems should be considered to be an exceptional measure and should therefore be kept as short as possible, as rapid and comprehensive migration is necessary in order to achieve the full benefits of an integrated payments market. It is also important to limit in time the costs to the payment service providers of the continued use of the legacy payment schemes in parallel with the SEPA system. Payment service providers that have already fully migrated to SEPA might consider providing payment service users that have not yet migrated with conversion services during the transitional period. During the transitional period, Member States should refrain from applying penalties to payment service providers that process non-compliant payments and to payment service users that have not yet migrated.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-10-14 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.