One of the primary objectives of Google’s treasury department is to achieve the maximum level of standardisation and efficiency possible and to remove obstacles that impact on the department’s ability to achieve this.

Ronni Horrillo, Assistant Treasurer, Google, comments, “We recognised as soon as the SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) was launched that SEPA could bring considerable benefit to Google for euro-denominated ACH payments to vendors, which accounts for a very high volume of payments.”

Google was unencumbered by legacy payment instruments, processes and bank interfaces so with the advent of SCT, Google was, to some extent, given a blank canvas. For Google, SCT represented an opportunity to directly implement a ‘best-in-class’ solution.

Google’s adoption of SCT coincided with their implementation of Citi® File Xchange (CFX), which meant that the company did not need to go through a technical migration process as SCT was already supported through CFX. As a technology-driven company with a commitment to excellence and an early adopter of CFX and SCT, Google’s initial testing was highly disciplined and rigorous.

As Horrillo explains, “The testing phase took longer than it would for companies implementing today. However, this process was important to ensure internal confidence. One of the vital roles of treasury is to keep the business fully informed and engaged with our payments initiatives as payments are such a pivotal function for Google. Therefore, internal communication was critical to our success.”

Google experienced some challenges implementing SCT, particularly as individual banks and countries are at different stages in their SCT adoption. For example, while the Payment Services Directive (PSD) has been adopted in 22 countries so far, it has not yet been universally ratified in every member state.

Citi has ensured that there is no impact on Google if a payment has to be re-routed to a non-SEPA payment method as the company has the same visibility of information on its bank statements, the same value-dating and the same payment fees.

Google now makes 98% of its payments in euro using SCT, and all vendor payments are now made using a single file format across Europe. By leveraging SWIFTNet, these are passed through a single channel. Standard payment rules are applied, making administration and reconciliation far easier.

While market and industry challenges in implementing SCT in a consistent manner across participating countries still remain, working with Citi, Google has been able to implement a single window, a consistent and scalable solution that has made SEPA a reality for Google and its suppliers today.

Horrillo concludes, “Google’s business is largely driven by efficient payments and collections, with huge volumes of payments and collections every day, and a customer and supplier base ranging from individuals to multinational companies. We want to make it as straightforward as possible for our customers to do business with Google. Efficient, innovative payment solutions that operate across borders are vital to achieving this. Implementing SCT has enabled us to make timely, efficient payments across the Eurozone with advantages both to Google and to our customers.”