UK payment processing firm Voca has signed a contract that will improve cross-border financial transactions in Europe.

The deal, with payment services firm EBA Clearing, will extend Single Euro Payments Area (Sepa) processing for Voca.

Sepa is intended to make cross-border payments as simple as domestic transactions by centralising and automating payment infrastructures. From 1 January 2008, every bank in the Eurozone must be able to deliver Sepa credit transfers to customers of any other bank.

Last year Voca implemented a payment platform capable of handling the entire European automated payment volume in under four hours.

The firm will now connect with EBA’s Step2 platform to allow banks to transact with each other and make payments.

Voca, which handles more than 5.5 billion transactions a year, says the agreement will guarantee Sepa delivery in the 31 participating countries.

Martin Wilson, chief commercial officer at Voca, says banking organisations will benefit.

‘There is an issue with Sepa’s reach and the industry is struggling with the deadline,’ he said.

‘There are 9,000 banks in Europe. They are not all connected to Voca, so the issue is how you get payments outside your customer base to their destination.’

Wilson says there are two other methods for making Sepa transfers apart from the Step2 platform. One is based on interoperability agreements with other payment providers and the other accesses the networks of European banks.

‘EBA Clearing has built a pan-European network to ensure all payments in the Eurozone cost the same as domestic payments. Step2 enables banks to send these payments,’ said Wilson.

‘We will be able to give banks choices about how payments are delivered as we have a number of channels.’