ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Pan-European automated clearing house

A pan-European automated clearing house is like a magic tunnel that helps people who live in different countries pay each other easily and quickly. Imagine you have a friend who lives in another country and you want to give them some money for their birthday. Normally, it would take a long time and be expensive to send the money through a bank. But, with the magic tunnel of the pan-European automated clearing house, your money travels from your bank to your friend's bank in just a few seconds, without anyone having to do anything manually.

Here's how it works:

When you want to send money to your friend's bank account, you give your own bank some details such as the amount of money you want to send and the bank account number of your friend. Your bank puts this information into the magic tunnel and sends it to your friend's bank. The magic tunnel then checks if your friend's bank account exists and if there is enough money in your account to pay your friend. If everything is okay, the money is moved from your bank account to your friend's and both banks are notified that everything has been completed successfully.

The pan-European automated clearing house is a super important tool because it helps people in Europe do business without worrying about different currencies and complicated banking rules. It's like a big team of helpers that make sure that people in different countries can send and receive money easily and quickly.