As the last notes of La Muette's Amour sacré de la patrie were dying out in a Brussels theatre on 25 August 1830, a riot broke out that became the signal for the Belgian revolution which eventually led to its independence from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

With this act, the opera had followed the same course in Belgium as it had in Paris. Europe, and within that the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, had been subject to constant change at the hands of royal families who had been shifting the borders, without regard for culture and heritage or the people who lived within those realms. After nearly nine years of resistance the Dutch caved in and a king, - found in Germany by the British who were very worried about instability in mainland Europe - was lifted on the crown of Belgium in 1839. Later, Luxembourg obtained the status of independent duchy as a result of some mingled inheritance laws.

In two paragraphs, I've drawn the outline for Benelux history, which on Wikipedia takes over 25 pages. What's the connection to payments? As improbable as it looks, with this history small nations like The Netherlands and Belgium have learned that rather than simply surviving whatever world events bring, in order to prosper we need to look at what binds us, rather than what separates us. Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg simply had to cross borders and reach out with an entrepreneurial spirit. Trading institutions such as the VOC - the Dutch East Indies Company - were established in The Netherlands in order to have more efficient means of doing business. To this very day in Belgium we live with three official languages, so levels of co-operation are not a luxury but a basic necessity.

Without being chauvinistic, this makes the choice of Amsterdam as the Sibos venue for 2010 an interesting one. Where we all struggle to deal with the many different sets of legislation for payments from regions within China to national change across Asia Pacific and the Americas and the enormous undertaking of SEPA in Europe, one truth stands out: we can only win by looking for core standard elements that we can multiply across larger volumes. We can fill libraries with documentation about variations on the various local schemes, and challenge the payments industry to demonstrate that equally large volumes could be written about elements that can be harmonised.

Let's take a look at some initiatives that demonstrate what can be done. As in Belgium, electronic payments have been the leading payments type for over two decades in The Netherlands. In 1994 three payments processing organisations felt they would achieve higher efficiency and thus customer satisfaction if they would merge: BeaNet, Eurocard and Bankgirocentrale merged into Interpay, which subsequently became Equens in 2005 in the search for ever greater transparency. This level of co-operation has given The Netherlands one of the most efficient, cost effective and flawless payment mechanisms in the world. Was it hard to bring together? Yes, but the relentless search for standards and commonalities made it possible.

In Belgium banks joined hands to form Isabel in 1995. Realising that in a small country with relatively few banks it would not make sense for every single bank to build a state-of-the-art corporate banking environment, a consortium took this in hand. Financial executives in Belgian firms could make payments to other parties with different banking partners through a single unified platform, effectively a countrywide multi-bank electronic banking system. Over the years Isabel has launched and effectuated many of the elements we talk about in the SEPA context: straight through processing and connectivity to back office administration systems at the corporate end, e-invoicing, payroll, budgeting, etc.

At the same time banks in The Netherlands once again got together to tackle the issue of increased demand for a safe internet payment tool. In a country with relatively low credit card usage and high acceptance of internet banking, a solution was found in extending the existing internet banking environments that people use already to facilitate secure internet shopping. Today, over 45 million Ideal transactions take place allowing customers to buy securely on the internet using direct online transfers from their bank account. Virtually all Dutch banks are part of the consortium and most online shops with an active presence in the Netherlands are members too - offering secure payment at low cost to their customers.

What do these initiatives teach us? That all is better in the Benelux? Please, no: we struggle with our differences, but come to Sibos and let us demonstrate to you what harmonisation and unification can mean in real terms - inside one bank by bringing many payment factories together into one or two, inside a country by uniting the various competing initiatives to one stronger and richer proposition or inside regions by building co-owned payment infrastructures on a step by step basis.

Come and talk to our banks in Belgium and ask them why SEPA Direct Debit has become the default standard for direct debit and why it does work, rather than not. Come and talk to the various Ideal participants and see what we can learn from this when we look at the uncountable new initiatives in mobile payments by extending or adding to the technology platforms of the various stakeholders.

Does this mean that we no longer compete and all become one grayish mash of undistinguished services? No, the joint initiatives work together where competition does not make the difference. A happy corporate banking consortium client is better than an unhappy one that you ‘own' as a bank. The customer facing angle is where the culture kicks in, where the relationship matters and where the unique DNA of a bank can shine through, offering specific payment products and services.

We certainly hope you will join us in Amsterdam and explore the differences between Belgium and the Netherlands: some can cook and others can eat (as we say, tongue in cheek); one knows how to brew beer and the other knows how to sell it. With our long heritage of surviving amidst controversy and cultural differences, we have learned that once we have taken care of the efficiency parts together, generating a real benefit for our industries and customers alike, it is time to salute  each other and raise a glass to our differences, which we never want to see fade away.

See you at Sibos.

Michel Akkermans is chairman and chief executive at Clear2Pay