Euro Payments FAQ: IBAN Accounts and SEPA Transfers

This page covers the two things that decide whether your money arrives and when: the account that holds it and the scheme that moves it. It answers what a euro IBAN account is, how it differs from a bank account and how the money is protected; how SEPA Credit Transfers and SEPA Instant differ in speed and availability; what information a payer needs to reach you; why a transfer is delayed or returned; and which costs EU law caps.

It closes with the practical questions people ask before signing up: who is eligible, what documents are required, why an application can be declined without a reason, and why a payment is sometimes held for review.

Blackcat appears throughout as an example. It is an app with a euro payment account and SEPA transfers, issued by Papaya Ltd, an Electronic Money Institution licensed by the Malta Financial Services Authority.

Euro IBAN Accounts

What is a euro IBAN account?

A euro IBAN account is a payment account identified by an International Bank Account Number and held in euros.

The IBAN is a standardised code that identifies both the institution and the individual account, which is what lets a payment sent from any other institution in Europe arrive in the right place. In the euro area, it is the only identifier you normally need to give someone who wants to pay you.

How does a Euro IBAN account work?

Money arrives when someone sends a payment to your IBAN, and leaves when you instruct a transfer or make a card payment. The balance is electronic money issued against funds you have paid in, not a deposit that the institution lends out.

Institutions that issue electronic money must hold customer funds separately from their own funds, which is different from how a bank funds its lending.

Can I open a Euro IBAN account online?

Yes, in most cases. Providers licensed in the EU can onboard customers remotely, verifying identity through document checks and a liveness or video step rather than a branch visit. What you cannot skip is the verification itself.

Blackcat must verify who you are, where you live, and, in some cases, where your money comes from before the account can be used.

What is the difference between a payment account and a bank account?

A bank account is held with a credit institution, which is licensed to accept deposits and lend them out. A payment account with an electronic money institution or a payment institution holds your money solely for payments, and the provider is not permitted to lend it.

The practical difference for you is how the money is protected if the provider fails. Bank deposits fall under a deposit guarantee scheme; e-money does not, and is protected by safeguarding rules instead.

What is a dedicated IBAN?

A dedicated IBAN is issued in your own name rather than being a reference number inside a pooled account held by the provider. That matters when a payer checks the name on the account before sending, which employers, tax authorities and marketplaces frequently do.

Blackcat issues a dedicated euro IBAN account in the account holder's name, and a user who opens several wallets receives a separate IBAN for each wallet.

Who can open an online IBAN account in Europe?

Eligibility is set by each provider under EU rules and is not open to everyone. Providers apply sanctions screening and anti-money-laundering policies, which may rule out certain countries of residence.

Blackcat accepts citizens of all countries. What matters is residency: we cannot provide services to residents of countries under EU, UN, or OFAC sanctions.

Please check Blackcat's current eligibility criteria before you apply.

Can I receive salary payments to a Euro IBAN account?

Usually yes. An employer paying in euros within the SEPA area sends an ordinary credit transfer, and a payment account with a euro IBAN can receive it in the same way a bank account would.

Can freelancers receive payments to an IBAN account?

Yes, and a separate account is often the point. Keeping client income away from personal spending makes bookkeeping and tax returns considerably easier, and gives you a clean statement to hand to an accountant.

Clients inside the SEPA area can pay in euros at domestic cost. Clients outside it will usually send an international transfer instead, which is charged differently and can take longer.

Does a Euro account come with a payment card?

A Blackcat account includes a payment card, available as a virtual card in the app and, on request, as a plastic card posted to any indicated address. Cards are currently available only to residents of the European Economic Area (EEA).

Can I use a Euro IBAN account for SEPA transfers?

Yes. Any euro account with an IBAN held at a provider that participates in the SEPA schemes can send and receive SEPA transfers.

Participation is what matters rather than the type of licence: banks, electronic money institutions and payment institutions can all take part, either as direct members of the scheme or through another institution. Papaya Ltd, which issues Blackcat, is a direct SEPA member.

SEPA Transfers

What is a SEPA transfer?

A SEPA transfer is a euro payment sent under the shared rules of the Single Euro Payments Area. Those rules standardise the message format, the identifiers used, and the maximum time the payment may take, so that sending euros to another country in the area works the same way as sending them within your own country.

The scheme covers credit transfers, instant credit transfers and direct debits.

Which countries are included in the SEPA area?

The SEPA region covers 41 European countries, including states outside the euro area and outside the EU, along with several territories linked to them.

That includes all EU member states, the other EEA countries, and Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Monaco, San Marino, Andorra and Vatican City. Scheme rules apply everywhere in SEPA, but rules that come from EU law, such as equal charging for euro payments, stop at the EU and EEA border. The European Payments Council maintains the current list.

What is the difference between SEPA Credit and SEPA Instant?

A SEPA Credit Transfer is processed in batches during business hours and must reach the recipient's provider within one business day. A SEPA Instant Credit Transfer settles in seconds, at any hour, on any day.

Instant transfers also cannot be charged more than standard ones under EU law. The practical difference lies in timing and availability rather than in the route the money takes.

How long does a SEPA transfer take?

A standard electronic SEPA Credit Transfer within the EEA has to be credited to the recipient's provider by the end of the next business day, with two business days allowed for paper-based instructions.

An instant transfer makes funds available within ten seconds. Weekends and public holidays do not count as business days for standard transfers, so a Friday afternoon payment may not arrive until Monday or Tuesday.

Are SEPA transfers available 24/7?

Instant transfers are standard; ones are not. SEPA Instant runs around the clock, every day of the year. Standard credit transfers depend on business days and on each provider's cut-off time, which is the point in the day after which an instruction is treated as received the following business day. Cut-off times are set by each provider and published in its terms.

What information is needed to make a SEPA payment?

For payments within the EEA, the recipient's IBAN and name are normally enough. A BIC may still be requested for SEPA countries outside the EEA. Many payers also add a reference so the recipient can match the payment to an invoice.

Since October 2025, providers in the euro area have had to offer a Verification of Payee check that compares the name you enter with the name on the account and warns you if they do not match.

Can I receive salary or freelance payments through SEPA?

Yes. Salary runs, pension payments, benefits and invoice settlements in euros across the SEPA area are ordinary credit transfers.

The payer needs your IBAN and the name on your account, and increasingly, the two must match for the payment to go through without a warning. If you invoice clients in several countries, quoting the same euro IBAN to all of them keeps the reconciliation simple.

Can I send a SEPA transfer to another country?

Yes, and that is the purpose of the scheme. Within the EU and EEA, a euro transfer to another country must cost the same as an equivalent domestic one and follow the same execution times. Sending euros to a SEPA country outside the EEA still works, but the equal-charging rule does not apply there so the price may differ.

What happens if the recipient's institution does not support SEPA Instant?

The payment is processed as a standard SEPA Credit Transfer instead. Instant transfers only complete when both the sending and receiving institutions participate in the instant scheme.

EU rules are phasing participation in over time, with banks in the euro area already covered and electronic money institutions and payment institutions due to comply by April 2027.

With Blackcat, routing is automatic: the app prioritises SEPA Instant and falls back to a standard transfer when the recipient's institution cannot accept SEPA Instant.

Why can a SEPA transfer be delayed or returned?

The most common reason is a mismatched detail. An IBAN with a typo fails validation, and the recipient's provider will return a valid IBAN for a closed account.

Payments can also be held for compliance checks or delayed because the instruction arrived after the cut-off time. Returned payments generally come back to the sender, though not always on the same day.

Are incoming and outgoing SEPA transfers free?

That depends on the provider, and the two directions are often priced differently. Incoming transfers are frequently free while outgoing ones carry a charge, or a set number is included each month.

What EU law requires is that a euro transfer to another EU or EEA country costs no more than a domestic one, and that an instant transfer costs no more than a standard one. Check the current pricing page for the figures that apply to you.

Is a SEPA transfer the same as a wire transfer?

No, although people use the terms loosely. "Wire transfer" usually refers to an international payment sent over correspondent networks between institutions, which can pass through intermediary institutions, take several days and incur fees along the way.

A SEPA transfer remains within a standardised euro scheme, arrives within a defined timeframe, and does not lose value to intermediaries.

Fees, Eligibility and Opening an Account

What fees usually apply to a euro payment account?

The common ones are monthly or annual account charges, fees for outgoing transfers, ATM withdrawal fees, currency conversion costs, card issuance and delivery charges, and sometimes an inactivity fee.

Not every provider charges all of them, and some bundle several free actions each month. The combination that suits you depends on what you do most, so compare against your own usage rather than the headline price.

Are SEPA transfers within the EU charged the same as domestic ones?

For euro payments, yes. The Cross-Border Payments Regulation requires that a euro transfer to another EU or EEA country costs no more than an equivalent domestic payment. The Instant Payments Regulation extends the same logic to speed, by requiring that an instant euro transfer cost no more than a standard one. Neither rule applies to SEPA countries outside the EU and EEA.

Who can open a euro payment account in the EU?

Adults who pass the provider's identity and eligibility checks. Beyond age and identity, providers assess residency, sanctions exposure and their own risk criteria, and each sets its own limits.

Availability also differs between products from the same provider: an account may be offered more widely than a payment card, since card issuance carries separate constraints.

What is KYC, and why is it required?

Know Your Customer is the process of verifying a customer's identity before providing financial services, and it is required by EU anti-money-laundering law rather than chosen by the provider.

In practice, it means an identity document, a selfie or video check, and questions about your address and sometimes the source of your funds. Providers must also keep the information current, which is why they occasionally ask for updated documents.

What documents are usually needed to open a payment account?

A valid government-issued photo identity document is the baseline, most often a passport or national ID card.

Many providers also ask for proof of address dated within the last few months, such as a utility bill or bank statement, and a live selfie or short video to verify your identity. Additional documents may be requested depending on your circumstances.

Can an application be declined?

Yes, and providers are not always able to explain why. Anti-money-laundering rules restrict how much can be disclosed about a decision so that an applicant may receive a decline without detailed reasons. It does not necessarily reflect anything about your finances. Applying to another provider with a different risk appetite is usually the practical next step.

Why might a payment be put under review?

Because it matched something the provider's monitoring flagged: an unfamiliar counterparty, an amount out of line with your history, a sanctions name match, or a pattern associated with fraud. Regulated providers monitor transactions continuously and may decline a payment automatically or hold it for manual review.

Reviews are a normal part of a supervised payment service, not a sign that something is wrong with your account.

Where to go next

The answers above describe how euro accounts and SEPA transfers work in general. What changes from one provider to the next is the detail, and that detail is what decides how much of a payment reaches you and how soon.

Blackcat offers a dedicated euro IBAN account in the account holder's own name, and Papaya Ltd, which issues Blackcat, is a direct SEPA member. Outgoing payments are routed to SEPA Instant where the recipient's provider supports it and falls back to a standard transfer where it does not.

The euro IBAN account page sets out what is included and who can apply, and the SEPA transfers page covers routing, timing and limits. Current fees live on the pricing page rather than being repeated here, because they change.

Cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, payment security, cashback and balance rewards are covered in the companion FAQ on euro payment cards, and card features are set out on the cards page.

If a question here was not answered, support is available at support@blackcat.app or through the in-app chat.

This page is general information about how Euro payment tools work. It is not financial, tax or legal advice, and it does not take into account your circumstances. Fees, limits, eligibility criteria and reward programme terms change, and the figures quoted here were accurate at the time of writing; always check the current pricing and terms before acting. Regulatory requirements described here apply to providers generally, and their application to any particular provider may differ.

The Malta Financial Services Authority licenses Papaya, Ltd. Papaya, Ltd. issues Blackcat as an Electronic Money Institution (EMI). Registration number C55146. Client funds are safeguarded in accordance with applicable legislation. The Depositor Compensation Scheme does not cover funds held in e-money accounts.