On Thursday 23 February, the European Consumer Organisation (known by its French acronym, BEUC) spoke out in the strongest possible terms against the technical standards for the security of payment services announced by the European Banking authority (EBA) the same day.
The organisation describes as “unacceptable” the proposal that remote payments below €30 - instead of €10 - be exempted from the strict customer identification rules and that, for remote payments of between €30 and €500, security rules be applied on the basis of the level of fraud observed.
According to the Director General of BEUC, Monique Goyens, consumers should benefit from rules to make payments more secure in order to avoid the damaging psychological impact caused by identity fraud in a financial transaction. “What is the reasoning for exempting all remote payments of less than €30? As a result, many of our daily payments will not be secure and will more easily pass under the radar”, she said in a press release.
These draft technical standards, which are still to be the subject of a formal proposal of the European Commission for approval by the Council of the EU and the European Parliament, are the results of tough compromises between the objectives of the revised 'payment services' directive (2015/20366), some of which contradict each other to an extent, the EBA said.
On the application of the client authentication requirements, the authority stresses that derogations will apply on the basis of the risk level contained in the service provided, the amount and the frequency of the transaction, and the payment network used to carry out the transaction. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)