Lithuania to join SEPA payment area

“Residents do not need to prepare for migration to SEPA; banks will take care of amendments for them. However, over the month until the implementation of SEPA provisions, I would advise everyone to find out how the payment order forms will change and how to properly complete them, so that there would be no surprises in the beginning of the next year,” said Marius Jurgilas, chairman of the SEPA Coordination Committee of Lithuania.

“Banks, enterprises and institutions, which perform and receive payments, have been intensively preparing to migrate to SEPA, making required changes in banking and accounting systems, testing how the changed payments are performed. We hope that the market will successfully finish preparations. One of the important goals in the final stages of preparation to the SEPA project is the active process of informing residents about the upcoming changes in payments,” emphasised Jurgilas.

From the beginning of next year, residents of Lithuania will be able to use, without any limitations, an account opened in Lithuania to receive their salary, social benefits and other payments from all European Union countries as well as Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, and Switzerland. These countries comprise the SEPA area. Residents will also be able to indicate, without any limitations, an account opened abroad in order to receive their salary, pension or other payments from Lithuania, the country’s central bank said.

In the field of payments, SEPA is the second major step in creating a single payments market in Europe. The first step in that direction was made with the euro adoption in Lithuania on 1 January, 2015.

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