SEPA

The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is a payment-integration initiative of the European Union for simplification of bank transfers denominated in euro. As of July 2015, SEPA consists of the 28 member states of the European Union, the four member states of the European Free Trade Association (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland), Monaco and San Marino.

Simply it means that if you want to receive your money via SEPA, then you must have opened account in bank or EMI(Electronic Money Institution) which operates in EU. It is pretty easy if you live here, but this do not apply to all our members. Problems are that lot of banks or companies require that you have to have proof of address from EU, prove that you have some ties with EU or give them a personal visit.

Luckily, there are services which does not have strict rules, all can be opened remotely from your home and we have experiences with them. Let's take a look on TransferWise , Wirex , CurrencyFair , LeoPay or Mistertango . If you are from Europe, then you should also look at Revolut , Fidor Bank , N26 Bank , Bunq or Monese . All these accounts are free, with little or no maintenance fees, so it is better to register to as much accounts as possible (you know just in case), because they can change their terms of service, add new features for older customers and most importantly it is easier to open account today than it will be tomorrow.

If you have any questions about these banks and services you can send us an email to or directly to their support.

How SEPA works with FriendlyBunny

SEPA payments work great, they are pretty fast, with no or low fees, so if you do not have an account with your own IBAN we believe that is time for you to get one. Remember that today is the best day! However, some of services which we are talking about are not banks in the real mean of a word, they have other regulations than bank have and most importantly there is usually no 100,000€ guarantee/insurance in case of something goes wrong, so it is not recommended to keep in large amounts of money. The real banks with licenses and insurance are Fidor Bank , N26 Bank and Bunq .