Brussels, 16/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - By the end of the year, the European Commission hopes to be able to adopt its proposal for a regulation introducing two deadlines for payments and direct debit orders in euro that meet the standards of the Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) (see EUROPE 10228). Competition services have requested that internal market services include provisions relating to multilateral interchange fees (MIF), a process that requires an impact assessment. The regulation on cross-border payments introduces an MIF of 8.8 eurocents until end 2012 to finance the introduction of payments by bankers' order in line with the SEPA project. The Commission's draft proposal is expected to fix the end of national bank payment systems one year after entry into force of the regulation. Then, one year later, this will be the case for national systems applicable to direct debit payments by bankers' order. On Wednesday, the Commission is to hold a public hearing on migration towards SEPA-labelled products. See: ec.europa.eu/internal_market/payments/sepa.ec_en.htm#migration (M.B./transl.jl)