As a European source confirmed, the European Parliament and the Council reached a positive agreement on Tuesday 11 December in the night session on the proposal to harmonise the costs of cross-border payments in euros throughout the EU (see EUROPE 11991).
The final compromise does not include extension of the Regulation to the alignment of the costs of cross-border payments in currencies other than the euro, as requested by the EP (see EUROPE 12085), but asks the Commission to review, three years after the entry into force of the Regulation, the desirability of such an extension.
While the Parliament failed to win on the comparability of real-time information on currency conversion costs (see EUROPE 12130), it nevertheless obtained several concessions from the Council to increase transparency prior to payment.
The text also introduces an obligation for payment service providers to inform their customers of the currency conversion charges applicable when a payment is made in another currency, in the general terms and conditions of contracts, either on their website (see EUROPE 12157) or via the mobile banking application.
The co-legislators also agreed that the provisions of the Cost Alignment Regulation should apply from 15 December 2019, while the 'currency conversion' provisions should apply later, 1 or 2 years after the Regulation enters into force.
The agreement has yet to be confirmed by both institutions. Member States are expected to give their green light on Wednesday, 19 December. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)