The newly introduced “Single European Payment Area” (SEPA) has a huge problem with its basic definition: The IBAN/BIC account number.

The IBAN (=International Bank Account Number) was supposed to be usable for €uro-wide transfers as well as direct debits. The creators of the SEPA-system have, unfortunately, not introduced truly uniform new €uro-wide account numbers.

Account numbers have merely been converted into a uniform format using their former constituent parts. Example for Germany:

Existing account:
account: 1234567890
sort code: 87654321

changed into:
IBAN: DE12876543211234567890
(where “DE” indicates the country, followed by 2 checksum digits, then the former sort code, and the old account number)

Details on all participating countries can be found on >>Wikipedia<<.

The problem is that the country can be immediately identified. As a consequence there are now forms which thwart the international purpose of the SEPA by requiring account numbers to start with “DE”. As an example see the online form of a German mobile phone operator:

Technically banks now allow €uro-wide direct debits, but the faulty implementation ensures that customers can´t use this feature.