The European Central Bank's deadline on ensuring all consumers in the European Union can send and receive payments anywhere in the 25-nation bloc from one account by 2010 is unrealistic, payment card group Visa said yesterday.

The central bank and the European Commission are piling pressure on banks to create a single payments area for credit transfers, and debit and credit cards by 2010. The ECB and EU executive want it to be as easy and cheap for people to pay bills in another country as it is at home. A single payments area would also make it easier for new entrants into the market to beef up competition.

"There is a gap between this simple vision and market reality," Visa executive vice-president Marc Temmerman said. "What may not be fully realistic is that everything is fully implemented by then."

Banks, under the European Payments Council (EPC) grouping, have presented a "road map" to create a single payments area by 2010, but only in the 12-nation euro zone currency bloc. Mr Temmerman does not expect a single EU-wide payments area by the ECB deadline, although Visa has told the EPC several times it favoured making an EU-wide payments area a priority.

Charlie McCreevy, European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, has complained that banks are slow in creating a single payments area. To speed up the process, he plans to propose legislation by October to create a single legal framework for payments.

Mr Temmerman said the proposal was likely to lay down a broad framework for harmonising payments rules so that member states would not be able to add stricter provisions that would impair competition. - (Reuters)