Brussels, 21/11/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament has called on the European Commission to prepare a legislative initiative to guarantee construction of a genuine single payment area in the euro zone or card payments by Internet and mobile phone. On Tuesday 20 November, MEPs adopted the draft resolution of Sampo Terho (ELD, Finland) in the belief that this initiative should help promote, “payment security, fair competition, financial inclusion, protection of personal data and transparency for consumers”. Nonetheless, it warns against overly strict regulation of the payments markets by internet and mobile phone, which would possibly undermine a market that is still in its development stages.
Current costs for processing payments by card are often too high for the costs that they are supposed to cover, assert MEPs. According to the latter, “making the costs more transparent instead of capping them should help to ensure that fees converge towards the lowest EU level”.
MIF. The Parliament is calling for a regulation to guarantee that Multilateral Interchange Fees (MIF) do not undermine competition by creating barriers to innovation and market access for new market entries. Framing the MIF at a European level would also allow them to choose the payment systems they want to operate. MEPs voted in favour by a small majority of an amendment requiring “the same approach” for card payments as that which called for the abolition of the MIF for transfers and SEPA deductions in Euros by February 2017. The Commission is therefore invited to analyse the impact of the different options in this field by the end of the year. Monique Goyens, the director-general of the European Consumers Office (BEUC) declared that, “these MIF that traders have to pay for inflated prices for consumers because the retailers pass on their costs to the prices of their products”. She welcomed the fact that the Parliament had given its support for a European regulation on the card payments markets. (MB/transl.fl)