British banks were arguably quite slow at the time, with cheques and 5 business day clearing still being common (as well as inane account numbering scheme). Bu

British banks were arguably quite slow at the time, with cheques and 5 business day clearing still being common (as well as inane account numbering scheme). But SEPA system was something that was "in the works" for I think a decade by then. A lot of it was essentially setting up faster interconnection that was compatible and cooperated with existing SWIFT systems and essentially enforced one standard set of parameters.