Cards: EU Commission Investigating the Payments Industry
- The European Commission has just opened a consultation on its Green Paper entitled “Towards an integrated European market for card, Internet and mobile payments”. A series of questions aims to assessing the opportunity to legislate for the card sector. Stakeholders are expected to express their views until 11 April 2012.
- This Green Paper fits in the Commission’s “Digital Agenda for Europe”, where a Digital Single Market-dedicated section sets the need, in Action 7, to “Fix a date for migration to Single European Payment & eInvoicing”. On the basis of the received responses, EU executives will define whether a Directive or a Regulation could improve competition, user services and Internal Market unification.
- The Green Paper mainly follows the EPC’s SEPA Cards Framework content, questioning the legitimacy of its provisions and monitoring their effective implementation throughout Europe, as well as their adequacy with recent market innovations. The Commission also needs to know whether SCF requirements must be reinforced or made compulsory, including compliance end-dates. The scope also includes the emerging payment methods: e-commerce and contactless solutions.
- All SEPA card topics are being covered: from interchanges to deregulation and the opening to non-banks, all along the chain. This includes cross-border acquiring, cobranded cards issuance, price transparency, management of national card schemes (“Cartes Bancaires” e.g.), standardisation and certification, new entrants and security issues. The possible rise of a third pan-European card scheme is not covered however (potentially competing with MasterCard and Visa).
- About interchange, the European Commissioner for Internal Market, Michel Barnier, has not let know of any plans to this day. However, he has announced his intent to legislate in favour of transparency on all retail banking fees as of September 2012.
See “New SEPA Cards Standardisation Volume”