BY JOHN ELLIS, FINANCIAL ADVISOR
In a world where a tap on a screen can call a taxi, buy a coffee or a cartload of online tat, the arrival of SEPA Instant Payments feels like handing the family car to your teenager.
Rolled out across Europe’s banks recently, including our own AIB, Bank of Ireland, PTSB, credit unions, and even digital entities like Revolut and Avant Money, this EU-mandated process promises to transfer your money into recipients’ accounts in under 10 seconds, any hour, any day, holidays included. No waiting for that rent payment or invoice to clear; it’s seamless, swift, and it’s available via apps, online banking, or branches without needing a sign-up process.
How many of us have had more than a few evenings dissolve into ‘sip and scroll’ sessions, a glass in one hand and the phone in the other with impulse buys piling up like unread emails? I’m all for progress but, let’s be honest, this isn’t just innovation; it could be a road to a financial blowout.
Modern money moves like lightening. BPFI’s latest Payments Monitor paints a stark picture; in the 12 months to June 2025, Ireland registered 1.6 billion contactless point-of-sale transactions worth €28.3 billion, claiming 87.9% of all card payments in the first half of the year.
Half of those transfers came from mobile wallets and not physical cards. It’s brilliant for grocery shopping or fuel without fumbling for change but it really dulls our spending radar. A coffee here, a parking top-up there, and suddenly your budget’s a battlefield of micro-battles lost.
April’s blackout in Spain and Portugal, which froze ATMs and killed card readers, exposed our digital over-reliance. Economies stuttered as governments scrambled, reminding us to keep some cash handy for when tech fails.
SEPA Instant turbocharges the risk. Unlike Revolut’s quick transfers via phone numbers or QR codes, banks need the payee’s IBAN, those long codes linking accounts across 36 countries under SEPA, Europe’s fast-payment system. Enter Verification of Payee (VoP), a fraud-fighter checking if your entered name matches the account holder’s. You’ll get a ping: a match, close match, no match, or service error. Then you decide, proceed, change, or cancel. It’s a barrier, when BPFI says 74% of us fear wiring cash to the wrong person, and one in five has, by mistake or through fraud. But, with no grace period, errors are final no recalls, just regret.
So, how do we harness the process? First turn on transaction alerts. Let that notification jolt you: “ Do you really need this?” Check your statements monthly and uncover the forgotten subscriptions and what you once though were essentials are no more. What about setting up a 24-hour rule, add to the cart, sleep on it, reassess in the morning. Get rid of the ‘buy now, pay later’ traps; that’s all they are, traps, debt dressed as deals.
Gillian Byrne, BPFI’s payments head, calls SEPA and VoP a “major step forward” for speed and security, and she’s quite right. Their Payrightnow.ie campaign is worth heeding. For instance, update payee names; swap ‘Rent’ for your landlord’s real name to avoid “no match” snags.
But for the average person managing mortgages and school runs, this rollout isn’t just tech talk – it’s convenience but use caution, as in the palm of your hand lies freedom or danger. Choose wisely one tap at a time. After all, in the instant everything world, the real win is keeping what’s yours.
T: 086 8362633
