When the Single Euro Payments Area system goes into effect inFebruary 2014, it could expose errors like out-of-date account datain the records of many European countries, costing them up to 20billion euros ($25.8 billion) in fees, according to a studyby Experian, an information services company, Finextrareports.

Experian looked at more than half a million bank account recordsfrom European businesses and found that 12% of current electronicpayments denominated in euros contain data errors that couldinterfere with the transfer of funds under SEPA.

Experian says that only 65% of transactions included fullyaccurate information about the destination account, and 45% of theinternational bank account numbers (IBANs) European companies havestored lack a valid bank identifier code (BIC), which is needed tocomplete transactions.