ECB blog: SEPA reaches 41 countries, but south-eastern Europe pays 6-12% to send cash home
Victoria Shinder2 min readAn ECB blog post published on 3 November calls the Single Euro Payments Area "Europe's unsung hero" and argues that many households still do not use it. SEPA now connects 41 countries, including all EU member states and a growing number of candidate countries: Albania and North Macedonia joined in 2024, Serbia in 2025, and Bosnia and Herzegovina applied for membership in August 2026.
The authors, Elisabeth Beckmann, Justus Meyer and Katharina Allinger, use the OeNB Euro Survey for six south-eastern European countries. Across them, around one-third of remittance recipients receive money in cash through relatives or friends and another third through physical money transfer operators. In Albania more than half use money transfer operators. Remittance receipt is common: about 21% of people in Albania report receiving remittances, 17% in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 10% in North Macedonia, 9% in Serbia, 8% in Bulgaria and 4% in Romania.
The choice of channel matters. Cash-to-cash transfers typically cost around 6% to 12%, and even digital non-bank transfers 1.5% to 4.5%. Inflows to Bulgaria are almost €3 billion a year and to Albania more than €2.5 billion, around 8.4% of its GDP; a 5% fee on those flows is roughly €140 million for Bulgaria and €130 million for Albania. SEPA transfers are designed to cost the same as domestic payments, and recipients with euro accounts can also avoid conversion costs.
The authors note that joining SEPA's geographical scope does not immediately deliver a fully working payment link, and that public awareness of SEPA remains surprisingly low.
What it means
The bottleneck is no longer the infrastructure but its use. For countries that have just joined, the gain from SEPA depends on whether banks offer it and whether senders know to ask for it, and the blog's numbers put a price on not knowing.