Because Bancontact is a scheme optimized for everyday low-value payments, a SEPA transfer that moves funds directly from account to account becomes the more natural option for high-value orders that push against card limits or for transactions of a B2B nature. Thanks to a mobile payment culture consolidated into the Payconiq app, Belgian consumers are already familiar with the act of approving in a banking app, and even in a bilingual market split between Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia, the flow of selecting a bank and authenticating in the app works identically regardless of language.

On the regulatory side, the EU Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) backs this up. Eurozone banks have had to offer SCT Inst reception since January 2025 and sending since October of the same year, and they can no longer charge more for an instant transfer than for a standard one, so real-time transfers between Belgian accounts have become a basic feature with no separate premium. The body that governs this scheme is the European Payments Council (EPC).

From the customer's point of view, three screens are all it takes. Once they designate their own bank at checkout, the payment initiation service (PISP) sends an approval request to that bank's app or web banking with the payment amount and payee already filled in. Approval takes effect the moment the customer completes authentication in the app, and on an SCT Inst route the arrival of funds is confirmed within seconds. Routes without instant transfer support follow the usual SEPA transfer schedule. The EUR revenue collected this way is received and converted by Hecto Financial and settled to the merchant in Korea in USD, KRW, or JPY as contracted.

Hecto Financial supports domestic merchants in adopting a SEPA checkout for Belgium 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)

You do not need to budget for chargeback handling costs with SEPA payments in Belgium. A push transfer the customer approves and sends themselves has no card-style payment dispute procedure, and the 8-week unconditional refund right specific to SEPA Direct Debit does not apply either. Put the other way around, there is also no automatic way to reverse a completed transfer, so if a refund is needed the merchant must execute a transfer back to the customer's account. Belgian consumers also hold the EU-wide 14-day right of withdrawal, so it is best to design the refund path for this in advance. The settlement currency is set by contract among USD, KRW, and JPY; Hecto Financial converts the EUR received and pays out on a cycle set by the contract terms.

• National Bank of BelgiumOfficial source for supervision and statistics on Belgium's payment systems. If actual regulations differ from this page's content, the official source takes precedence.