The European payments industry is in danger of losing out to the likes of non-bank entities such as Facebook if regulators, banks and the payments community cannot work together on progressing the Single European Payments Area initiative, according to Mark Buitenhek, global head of payments and cash management at ING.

Speaking at a panel on 'Sepa - will the market finally move?' at the Sibos international banking conference in Toronto yesterday, Buitenhek said that Europe was not among the four largest global communities, which he said were China, India, Facebook and the US. Unless implementation speeds up, Europe could fall further behind and lose out to other countries and non-bank payment systems such as online service PayPal.