Brussels, 20/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - The European alliance of payment service users is calling for greater transparency and competition on the payment services market.
Organisations EACT, EMRA, EuroCommerce, EUROPIA, ERRT, HOTREC and UEAPME say that the revision of the EU rules on payment services should go further in its restrictions on multilateral interchange fees (MIF) paid by the bank where a trader holds an account to the bank of the payment card used by a customer to pay for the transaction in question. The European Commission suggests limiting MIFs to 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards.
The European alliance calls for the provision of “an interchange-free electronic debit service (card/application) for all citizens by mandating the removal of the interchange fee on consumer debit cards. As an alternative, any fee should be set as a maximum fixed cap in line with current best practice at national level (with provision for a proportionate fee for micro-payments)”. It explains: “The current proposal to exempt commercial cards from caps is unjustified economically and risks creating loopholes”, and says it is “highly disappointed” that some payment card systems provided by third parties have been exempted.
The European alliance says that, for international payments, the new caps should come into place two months after the draft regulation is adopted, and six months for national payments, noting: “The proposed two-year deadline for national implementation is not technically necessary and would adversely affect mainly SMEs and consumers since the greatest burden of interchange fees is felt at national level”. (MB/transl.fl)