News

Payments regulatory news, 15 March 2021

FIG Bulletin

15 March 2021

Recent regulatory developments focussed on the payments sector. See also our Financial institutions general regulatory news of broad relevance in the Related Materials links.

Strategic trends Pay.UK report and Knowledge Hub

Pay.UK has announced the publication of a report exploring the key trends that are shaping the future of retail payments. The report, "Strategic trends: Retail payments in a future world", explores the way homes, work and play are being changed by evolving technologies, smarter AI and changing consumer behaviours.

Alongside the report, Pay.UK has launched a "Knowledge Hub", designed to encourage the industry to collaborate and innovate around challenges and topics to shape a shared vision for the future of UK payments.

The first of a number of planned collaborative projects through the Knowledge Hub is to ask the payments community to consider how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the trajectory of the industry.

Interested parties can access the report and share views on the Knowledge Hub by registering for the Pay.UK Portal.

EU-wide instant payments scheme: European Commission consults on roadmap

The European Commission has published for consultation an inception impact assessment (roadmap) on a proposal for a Regulation on an EU-wide instant payments scheme. The purpose of the draft roadmap is to assess the need to foster pan-European market initiatives based on instant payments to ensure that anyone holding a payment account in the EU can receive and send an instant credit transfer from and to any other payment account in the EU.

The deadline for comments on the draft roadmap is 7 April 2021. Responses will help the Commission to determine whether to pursue the initiative and, if it does, its final content. The Commission's indicative plan is to adopt a proposal for a Regulation on the initiative in Q1 2022.

Mobile Initiated SEPA (Instant) Credit Transfers: use cases and interoperability models: EPC stakeholder group consultation

The multi-stakeholder group (MSG) on Mobile Initiated Single European Payment Area (SEPA) (Instant) Credit Transfers (MSCTs), which is facilitated by the European Payments Council (EPC), is consulting on a document it has developed analysing new MSCT use cases and interoperability models.

The document provides an analysis of new MSCT use cases for customer-to-business payment contexts for SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT instant) based on Quick Response (QR) codes, Near-Field-Communication (NFC) and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology, such as those involving a Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP) or a Collecting Payment Service Provider (CPSP), as a collector of the transactions on behalf of the merchant, MSCT transactions with unknown final transaction amount, and so-called offline MSCT use cases whereby the consumer device has no internet connection during the transaction.

The document also analyses the technical interoperability aspects of MSCT models involving a PISP or a CPSP, both for MSCTs based on payee- or payer-presented data and the impact on the technical interoperability requirements.

The consultation period closes on 7 May 2021.