What changes when a country joins SEPA but keeps its own instant rail?

The National Bank of Moldova reported that first year on 6 October 2026: 1.2 million transactions between October 2025 and September 2026, EUR 16.4 million saved, and the average cost of a cross-border euro transfer down from fees between EUR 20 and EUR 150 to around EUR 1¹.

What the first year measured

1.2 million transactions over twelve months¹.
The same volume over SWIFT would have cost about EUR 17.7 million. Over SEPA it cost EUR 1.3 million¹.
Almost 8 in 10 euro transactions now run through SEPA¹.
Application on 30 January 2024, accession approved on 6 March 2025, operational connection on 6 October 2025¹.

Every one of those figures describes a credit transfer: the payer instructs their own bank, the money lands in the payee's account, and the gain is price and predictability on cross-border euro payments. None of them describes a payment started at a till or on a checkout page.

Credit transfer and acquiring are different layers

A rail moves money between accounts. A2A acquiring is the merchant-side function built on top of it: presenting the request, confirming that the money is final and belongs to this order, returning it, reconciling it, and carrying it into the software the merchant already runs. The two layers scale separately, and the euro area shows the gap plainly. Instant transfers reached 10.1 billion in 2025, up 73% in a year, and 35.6% of all SEPA credit transfers in the first quarter of 2026², while cards were still 57% of euro-area non-cash payments in the second half of 2025³.

Three markets make the same point from the other direction:

Mexico launched its CoDi QR system in 2019 on a fast, modern rail, and fourteen months later it had processed just over a million transactions, about one twenty-eighth of the central bank's target⁴.
FedNow settled about 5 million payments worth $275 billion in the second quarter of 2026⁵, an average of roughly $55,000 per payment.
In Brazil, Pix is the most used means of payment, at 54.7% of all transactions in the second half of 2025 against 30.4% for cards⁶, and it was about 7% of the transactions on card terminals in 2025⁷.

What a product team has to build on the domestic rail

The list is short and none of it comes with the rail:

Two ways to ask for money: a payload the payer picks up (QR code, payment link, NFC tag) and a request-to-pay sent into the payer's banking app, where the rail provides one.
Delivery channels: the seller's app, the web, an API, chat and the cash register for the payload, plus the payer's banking app for a request-to-pay where the rail provides one.
A confirmation fast enough and certain enough for a cashier to release goods against it.
Refunds and recurring payments, where the rail provides them.
One merchant back office where every transaction of every channel lands.
Merchant onboarding and activation, which stays on the bank's side.

miaPOS is that layer, built as acceptance software inside the bank's perimeter. The bank holds the licence, the scheme membership and the merchant relationship; the platform generates the request, receives the confirmation and runs the merchant back office. It is live on MIA in Moldova and on RoPay in Romania, the scheme the national clearing house launched in October 2024⁸, and it speaks ISO 20022 end-to-end on SEPA Instant, MIA and RoPay. There are no cards and no EMV in it. Refunds and request-to-pay follow what the underlying rail supports.

The roles are worth naming, because they sit on different layers: the payer authorises in their own bank's app, the payer's bank sends, the scheme moves the money, the merchant's bank is the A2A acquirer holding the licence and the merchant relationship, and the acquiring platform does the acceptance work. The full definition sits on What is A2A acquiring, and the mechanics of one national scheme are set out on how MIA acceptance works.

At the checkout there are two ways to pay, a card and an instant transfer from the account. The merchant decides what to offer, the buyer decides what to use, and the acceptance layer has to handle both arriving in the same reports.

Common questions

Does joining SEPA give merchants a way to accept payments?

No. SEPA standardises euro credit transfers between accounts, which is why fees on a euro transfer out of Moldova fell from between EUR 20 and EUR 150 to around EUR 1 after the connection¹. Accepting a payment at a point of sale needs an acquiring layer on top of a rail, with a request, a confirmation, refunds and reconciliation.

What is the difference between SEPA and a domestic instant payment scheme?

SEPA is the common rulebook for euro transfers across its member countries, used for invoices, suppliers, salaries and personal transfers¹. A domestic instant scheme moves local currency between accounts in seconds, around the clock, and is the rail a merchant checkout in that country runs on. A bank usually needs both, for different customers and different payments.

What does a bank have to build to accept instant payments at the point of sale?

A way to ask for money as a payload or, where the rail provides one, a request-to-pay; delivery of the payload through the app, web, API, chat and cash register; a confirmation the cashier can act on; reconciliation of every payment with its order; refunds where the rail allows them; and one back office across all channels. Merchant onboarding and activation stay with the bank, since the bank holds the licence and the client relationship.

A2A acquiring with miaPOS

Building instant-payment acceptance with your merchants? See how miaPOS works with banks.

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Sources

Written by Ghenadie Cernei, Founder, Finergy. 13 October 2026.