Austria's preference for account transfers, epitomized by eps, is bound up with a conservative spending culture. The more a consumer values cash and is cautious about using credit, the more they tend to trust a payment that leaves their own account balance directly rather than drawing on a card limit. eps is ultimately a service that wraps a bank account transfer in an online payment form, and SEPA Credit Transfer is the European Payments Council (EPC) standard scheme that underpins it. Even a merchant site that has not integrated eps separately can absorb the same account-payment demand by adding a PISP-based SEPA checkout.

Regulation has taken care of the speed question. With the EU Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) requiring eurozone banks to receive SCT Inst (January 2025) and then to send it (October 2025), transfers between Austrian banks complete within seconds, and instant transfers may no longer be priced higher than standard ones. It is especially worth considering for one-off orders with a high average ticket where card fees weigh heavily, such as furniture or alpine lifestyle purchases like ski and hiking gear.

For an Austrian customer familiar with eps, the payment sequence needs no explanation. When the customer selects their main bank at checkout, the PISP hands them over to a transfer screen with the amount and payee already filled in, and the customer approves the payment simply by completing identity authentication in their banking app. If both banks are connected via SCT Inst, the merchant is notified of confirmed receipt within seconds, and in the exceptional cases where an instant transfer is not established, processing follows the standard SCT schedule. The euro funds arrive in Hecto Financial's receiving account and are then converted and paid out to the merchant in Korea in the contracted currency among USD, KRW, and JPY.

Hecto Financial supports domestic merchants in adopting a SEPA checkout for Austria through integration with a PSD2-authorized payment initiation service partner. Because the result is finalized the moment approval is given, it is best to design your inventory handling and order-confirmation logic around this real-time approval flow.

• Business registration country

  Confirm contract eligibility for businesses registered in Korea

• Sales channels

  The integration approach and priorities vary depending on your mix of online sales channels, such as your own site, open marketplaces, and mobile apps

• Product categories

  Check in advance whether your products fall under categories restricted by the SEPA payment initiation partner's merchant policy

• EU regulatory compliance

  Confirm compliance with EU payment regulations such as PSD2 and SEPA (see official sources below)

Because this is a transfer the customer actively pushes, neither the 8-week unconditional refund right attached to automatic debits nor the card networks' chargeback system applies to this payment. For product categories where a dispute would be costly, such as high-value furniture or equipment sales, this is a tangible reduction in risk. In exchange, a completed transfer is a final payment that cannot be reversed, so when honoring a return or an Austrian consumer's 14-day right of withdrawal, the merchant must operate a process for executing a fresh refund transfer to the customer's account. Settlement pays out the EUR that Hecto Financial has received, converted into the USD, KRW, or JPY currency agreed at contract, on a cycle set by the contract terms.

• Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB)Official information on Austria's payment systems and statistics. If actual regulations differ from this page's content, the official source takes precedence.
• Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA)Official regulatory information on payment services licensing and supervision.