Over 40 participants recently completed a comprehensive course on the integration of Maltese financial services into the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), organised jointly by the Institute of Financial Services (IFS-Malta) and the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) over six sessions.

The objective of the course was to enable participants to better understand the vision of SEPA, understand the fundamentals of the single market and the adoption of the Payment Services Directive, know what is involved in launching SEPA-related products, and obtain an overview of the recent developments at the European Payments Council. The course enabled those attending to gain insight into the relative challenges and opportunities offered by the SEPA project in the areas of credit transfers, direct debits and the cards and cash frameworks.

The speakers were specialists in their field. These were Peter James Sant, Senior Economic Officer, EU Affairs, Bank of Valletta, who is also Malta’s representative on the European Payments Council; Jesmond Gatt and Ken Mifsud Bonnici, both from the Payments Systems Office of the Central Bank of Malta; and invited guest Leonar Machado from Portugal, Chair of the Cash Working Group of the European Payments Council (EPC) and general manager at Caixa Geral de Depósitos with responsibilities in the payments area. Bank of Valletta, Malta’s representative bank on the European Payments Council, was instrumental in bringing Ms Machado to Malta.