Card Schemes: Bancontact/Mr. Cash SEPA Compliant
- Bancontact / Mr. Cash (BC-MC) SEPA migration has been confirmed during an exchange with the Belgian domestic debit card scheme’s operator and processor Atos Worldline Belgium. The Brand and License Company, which manages BC-MC’s rights, rules and brands, will be SEPA compliant and named Bancontact-MisterCash sa/nv.
- Belgium-based banks decided to keep their national scheme and allow competition between card schemes operating in the SEPA zone, instead of letting them vanish away.
- In 2007, BC-MC was supposed to be replaced by Maestro while its commercial operator and processor, Banksys, was being sold to Atos Worldline. Maestro would have been a new scheme for national card transactions, as is the case in the UK, in Austria and in Switzerland. Nevertheless, Belgian merchants strongly weighted in this decision of the banks, as they feared their commissions would increase. Maestro’s interchange was then much higher than BC-MC’s. End of 2006, the decision was subsequently sine die delayed.
- In 2011, Belgian banks have to confront a new political and regulatory context. Since 2005, EU authorities do not require that the card schemes cover all 32 SEPA countries. It would in fact have been dangerous that national payments be transferred to the international schemes, MasterCard and Visa. They pleaded for the co-existence of several competitive EU schemes, with limited cross-border coverage in at least 2 countries and not 32.