Estonia started operating within the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) on February 1st, 2014. Reasons for its acceptance were gaining the advantage of an integrated market and simplification of payment solutions for private persons as well as companies.

The main change accompanying joining SEPA is that from now on all the account numbers have to be in the form of a 20-digit IBAN account number. The banks also replaced the domestic direct payment order with a service based on e-invoices, which allows setting up automatic payments.
With the introduction of EU single payments system, private individuals have to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of payment information given to the banks. People can modify their domestic account numbers with the help of the IBAN calculator. Attention has to be paid to the fact that different banks in Estonia have different account number lengths: if it is shorter that 14 digits, a certain amount of zeroes is added at the beginning.

Additional benefits for private persons and companies include usage of standing orders to implement payments within SEPA (which consists of 34 states), for example, paying regularly for goods or services bought abroad. The process of changing banks is also becoming more convenient – arranging another Eurozone bank as a domestic bank is simplified.
Companies have to note that starting from February 1st 2014, the banks no longer accept payment orders in the old form and accountants have to ensure the accordance of company payments with the overall Single Euro Payments Area conditions. At the same time the possibility to make all the payments from one account is now an advantage, accountancy abroad with the bank account registered in Estonia will also become convenient.

The banks are supporting the implementation of payments for private persons and companies using the innovation through a one-year adaptation period. This means that banks in Estonia have the right to offer customers modification of payments, presented in the old form, up to February 1st, 2015.