Activities of Sari ESSAYAH related to 2012/2040(INI)
Shadow reports (1)
REPORT on ‘Towards an integrated European market for card, internet and mobile payments’ PDF (230 KB) DOC (143 KB)
Amendments (49)
Amendment 2 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A
Recital A
A. whereas the European market for card, internet and mobile payments is fragmented across national borders and only a few big players are able to get acceptance by merchants and to operate on a cross-border basis;
Amendment 10 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D
Recital D
D. whereas the Green Paper does not tackle the cost of cash or cheque payments in comparison with card, internet and mobile payments, thus preventing an analysis of the economic and welfare cost of payments by cash or cheque;
Amendment 12 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D a (new)
Recital D a (new)
Da. whereas the current business model for card payments allows sometimes excessive levels of MIFs, which constitute a barrier for competition;
Amendment 15 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F
Recital F
F. whereas surcharges for the use of card payments are not allowed in some Member States but widely in use in some others and excessive surcharges have been to the detriment of consumers;
Amendment 16 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F a (new)
Recital F a (new)
Fa. whereas the SEPA Cards Framework requires customers to be able "to use general purpose cards to make payments and cash withdrawals in euro throughout the SEPA area with the same ease and convenience than they do in their home country. There should be no differences whether they use their card(s) in their home country or somewhere else within SEPA. No general purpose card scheme designed exclusively for use in a single country, as well as no card scheme designed exclusively for cross-border use within SEPA, should exist any longer."
Amendment 20 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph -1 (new)
Paragraph -1 (new)
-1. Commends the Commission for providing the Green Paper and finds the considerations and questions posed therein to be highly relevant and fully agrees with the listed aims to get more competition, more choice, more innovation and more payment security as well as customer trust;
Amendment 21 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph -1 a (new)
Paragraph -1 a (new)
-1a. Agrees with the Commission that it is necessary to distinguish between three different product markets in the sphere of four-party bank card systems: first of all a market in which the various card systems compete to get financial institutions as their issuing or acquiring customers; then a first 'downstream' market, in which the issuing banks compete for the business of the bank card holders ('the issuing market'); lastly a second 'downstream' market, in which the acquiring banks compete for the merchants' business ('the acquiring market') and considers that free competition should be enhanced at every market;
Amendment 22 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph -1 b (new)
Paragraph -1 b (new)
-1b. Notes the importance of market- based self-regulation in cooperation among all stakeholders, but recognizes that self-regulation may not achieve desired outcomes in an acceptable timeframe due to conflicting interests; expects the Commission to come forward with necessary legislative proposals in order to help ensure a true SEPA for card, internet and mobile payments and notes in this respect the importance of the forthcoming review of the Payment Services Directive;
Amendment 23 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph -1 c (new)
Paragraph -1 c (new)
-1c. Underlines the need for a clear and comprehensive vision of a SEPA for cards, internet and mobile payments and provision of necessary guidelines and timelines to reach the basic goal that there should not be any difference between cross-border and national payments;
Amendment 24 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph -1 d (new)
Paragraph -1 d (new)
-1d. Underlines the need to advance towards a real-time clearing and settlement system, which technically is already within reach and used for some payments, and stresses that moving to a real-time economy should be an important goal SEPA-wide and that an advanced real-time interbank system would need to have SEPA-wide reachability;
Amendment 25 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph -1 e (new)
Paragraph -1 e (new)
-1e. Is therefore of the opinion that all national card, mobile and internet payment schemes should join or turn themselves into a Pan-European SEPA- compliant scheme so that all card and mobile and internet payments would be accepted everywhere in the SEPA and that a necessary period should be suggested by the Commission for this transition;
Amendment 26 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph -1 f (new)
Paragraph -1 f (new)
-1f. Believes that all card schemes whether four party, three party or mixed schemes and any new market entrants should be treated equally in order to ensure a level playing field also when all acquirers should need to accept all cards;
Amendment 27 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph -1 g (new)
Paragraph -1 g (new)
-1g. Notes that all terminals should be able to accept all cards and fulfil interoperability requirements and therefore any technical barriers resulting from differences in the functionality and certification requirements for terminals should be removed as common standards and rules and standardised terminal software would increase competition;
Amendment 31 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Expresses concern at unduly tight regulation of internet and mobile payment markets at this stage because such payment methods are still in the process of development; asks the Commission to adopt a radically different and appropriate approach to these new payment methods in any future proposal, and considers it beneficial to harmonise certain new developments from the start before too much fragmentation is created;
Amendment 33 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Recalls that each payment method has its costs;grets that in the current situation most payment costs are non-transparent and those who do not use expensive payment methods still cover their costs; recalls that each payment method has its costs for all participants in the payment market and asks the Commission, therefore, also to consider in the future the cost of cash and cheque payments compared to other payment methods, including the peculiarities and social benefits of cash, and propose how less costly payment methods could be advanced in relation to the costlier ones;
Amendment 40 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3 a (new)
Paragraph 3 a (new)
3a. Notes that for internet and mobile payments most standards should be the same as for current SEPA-payments, but new standards are needed for security and identification of customers and to provide interbank online real-time delivery and underlines that developing new standards is not enough, coordinated implementation is at least as important;
Amendment 44 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4 a (new)
Paragraph 4 a (new)
4a. Notes that basically all payment transactions contain the same kind of data and stresses that there should be safe data communication for any payment allowing straight-through end-to-end real-time processing, and sees the advantages of all systems using the same message format, and reminds that the most obvious choice is the one used for credit transfer and direct debit as defined in the Annex of the SEPA End-date Regulation (i.e. ISO XML 20022) and recommends that it should be used in all transaction data communication from terminal to customer carrying all relevant information;
Amendment 45 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4 b (new)
Paragraph 4 b (new)
4b. Notes that ATM cash withdrawal fees outside the PSUs own bank and card scheme are often excessive in many Member States and should be more cost- based SEPA-wide;
Amendment 50 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Supports the involvement of all the parties concerned in the further development of common technical and security standards for payment schemes; notes that these parties may include – but are not necessarily restricted to – the European Payments Council (EPC), consumer organisations, the European Banking Authority, the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Councilmerchant organisations and large retail chains, the European Banking Authority, the Commission, experts in various fields, non- banking payment service providers and representatives of mobile, internet and card payment providerscommerce, and they should arrange their work under new governance structure where the SEPA Council has a strong coordinating role;
Amendment 58 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Notes that the separation of payment infrastructures from payment schemes could increase competition as smaller players would not be blocked out due to technical constraints; stresses that PSPs should be free to select any combination of issuing and acquiring services available within the payment schemes on the market and payment infrastructures should process neutrally transactions of different parallel payment schemes for similar instruments;
Amendment 61 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7 a (new)
Paragraph 7 a (new)
7a. Stresses that consumer privacy should be protected in accordance with the European and national legislation and each party in the payment chain should only have access to data relevant to its processing and the rest would be bypassed encrypted;
Amendment 64 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Points out that further standardisation is needed to promotewould contribute to the further promotion of cross-border acquiring, an arrangement which would increase competition and the choices available for merchants and could result in more cost- efficient payment methods for customers;
Amendment 66 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Urges that solutions to further facilitate cross- border acquiring be actively sought, in view of its advantages to the internal market; expresses concern at existing barriers such as licensing, which should be abandonedlegal and technical barriers, which should be removed in order for a non-domestic SEPA-compatible acquirer not to be treated differently to a domestic acquirer in that country;
Amendment 69 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 a (new)
Paragraph 9 a (new)
9a. Stresses that there should be no major differences between legislation of various payment accounts, and the payer should be able to make an internet or mobile funds transfer to any payee whose account is in any SEPA-connected financial institution;
Amendment 70 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 b (new)
Paragraph 9 b (new)
9b. Underlines that all authorised PSPs should have the same access right to clearing and settlement facilities, if they have adequate risk management procedures, fulfil minimum technical requirements and are deemed to be sufficiently stable so that they do not pose any risk, i.e. basically are subject to the same relevant requirements as banks;
Amendment 71 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 c (new)
Paragraph 9 c (new)
9c. Reminds, that according to the European Court of Justice ruling on the "Mastercard case" of 24 May 2012 the Multilateral Interchange Fee, MIF, may be considered anticompetitive and asks the Commission to propose how this ruling should be taken into account in regulating the business models of card, mobile or internet payments.
Amendment 73 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Considers that MIFs can currently be justified as a mecurrent MIF revenues can be too high compared to the costs they should cover ansd to finance the four- party card payment systems; notes that the level of MIFs is sometimes higher than what the financing of the four-party payment system requirehat a zero MIF could be one alternative to be considered to promote competition and transparent pricing as every PSU would agree the applied service charges with the PSPs they would be using; points out that there might be a need to balance different payment charges in order to ensure that cross-subsidising practices would not promote inefficient instrument choices and asks the Commission to study different business models and evaluate their benefits and drawbacks;
Amendment 78 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 a (new)
Paragraph 10 a (new)
10a. Reminds that according to the basic idea of SEPA there should be no difference between national and cross- border MIFs or MIFs of a PSP in two Member States; notes that the level of MIFs should converge or be reduced gradually within a set timeframe and expects the Commission to propose a transitional period to this effect including objective criteria for the difference of MIFs during the transitional period and underlines that eliminating national MIF differences would complement the provisions of Regulation 924/2009, which aims at eliminating the differences in charges for cross-border and national payments;
Amendment 82 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 b (new)
Paragraph 10 b (new)
10b. Notes that after a transitional period a person coming from any Member State should have his or her SEPA-compatible payment card accepted at every payment terminal in the SEPA, and the payment should be safely routed; notes that this requirement might imply that MIFs need to be regulated to fall under a threshold, and insists that this should not result in an increase of MIFs in any Member State but rather to a decrease and perhaps approach zero at some later stage.
Amendment 83 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 c (new)
Paragraph 10 c (new)
10c. Considers that the "Honour All Cards Rule" (HACR), the "Non- Discrimination rule" (NDC) and blending should be banned as anticompetitive practices;
Amendment 84 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 d (new)
Paragraph 10 d (new)
10d. Considers that cross-border and central acquiring should be enhanced and any technical or legal obstacle should be removed, as that this would help reducing the levels of MIFs and merchant fees;
Amendment 85 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
Amendment 106 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Notes that co-badging which has been voluntarily entered upon by involved payment systems could be beneficial to consumers as it would result in fewer cards and a wider range of choicin the consumers' wallets, and facilitate national domestic schemes,' and wouldccess to the broader SEPA-market encourageing competition;
Amendment 109 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16
16. StressesPoints out that the customer and the issuing PSP should mutually agree on co- badging and that it should not be made mandatory; ardholding customers should have the freedom to select which of the provided co-badging alternatives are activated on their specific cards, and insists that the merchants should have the right to select which co- badged alternatives they are willing to accept and in every specific payment situation the cardholding customers should have the right to select their preferred co-badging alternative among those accepted by the merchant;
Amendment 113 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 a (new)
Paragraph 16 a (new)
16a. Stresses that it must be clear to all parties as to who is responsible for the protection and confidentiality of cardholder and merchant data and responsible for the co-branded payment instrument;
Amendment 116 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17
Paragraph 17
17. Welcomes the ban on surcharges for the use of card payments in some Member States; calls on oConsiders that it would be important to ban the possibilities for excessive surcharges in relation to the merchant fee of an individual transaction, and to control rebates and similar consumer steering practices throughout ther Member States to consider requiring more transparency on surcharges in order to ensure that the customer knows how much of the surcharge comes from, for example, the MIF and how much is further imposed by the merchant; , and therefore merchants should accept one commonly used payment instrument without any surcharge (SEPA- compliant debit card, e-payment) and any surcharges on other instruments may not at any point exceed the direct costs of those instruments compared to the instrument accepted without surcharge;
Amendment 121 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18
Paragraph 18
Amendment 126 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18 a (new)
Paragraph 18 a (new)
18a. Considers that the minimum security requirements for internet, card and mobile payments should be the same in all Member States and that there should be a common governing body setting the requirements; notes that standardised security solutions would simplify customer information and thus the way customers adapt to security arrangements and they would also reduce costs within PSPs and therefore all PSPs should be required to maintain common minimum security solutions, which may naturally be improved by PSPs but these improvements should not become competition barriers;
Amendment 128 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19
Paragraph 19
19. Recalls that the final responsibility for security measures relating to different payment methods cannot lie with customers, but that they should be informed about security precautions; and financial institutions should be responsible for fraud costs, unless caused by the customer "by acting fraudulently or by failing to fulfil one or more of his obligations under Article 56 of the Payment Service Directive with intent or gross negligence", in order to incentivise them to continuously improve their security level.
Amendment 132 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19 a (new)
Paragraph 19 a (new)
19a. Considers it important that all payment frauds in SEPA are reported to a centralised site for monitoring, statistics and evaluation, in order to respond quickly to new security threats and that the main developments should be made public;
Amendment 134 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20
Paragraph 20
20. Considers that the security of face-to- face card payments is already high and the gradual change from magnetic cards to chip cards, which should be completed rapidly, will improve the level of security even further, but is worried that some current European EMV-implementations may not be fully consistent and urges to remedy this unwanted situation and reminds that improved solutions are also needed for remote network-based card payments;
Amendment 141 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. Stresses that regulationory and technical developments could lower these security risks and could make payments through non-bank PSPs as safe as payments directly from well-protected bank accounts, as long as secure systems are available in practice;
Amendment 143 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23
Paragraph 23
23. Does not, therefore, support third-party access to a customer's bank account information before secure systems are developed, built and thoroughly tested; notes that in any future regulation special attention should be paid to security, data protection and consumer rights; considers, in particular, that it should be clearly specified which parties can have accesshould third parties be permitted to access account information in the future, this access should be kept to a minimum and that it should be clearly specified by the customer via mandates which parties can have access on a non- discriminatory basis to which information and under which conditions the data can be stored;
Amendment 150 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23 a (new)
Paragraph 23 a (new)
23a. Notes that as security threats keep increasing there is a role for also European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) and the European Telecommunications Standard Institute (ETSI) to be actively involved in developing security standards;
Amendment 151 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23 b (new)
Paragraph 23 b (new)
23b. Notes that in payment systems where one or many of the participants are in different Member States, the Commission is expected to make a clarifying proposal on which courts or which out-of-court dispute settlement system should be used for any disputes and that consumers have easy access and use of these Alternative Dispute Resolution bodies.
Amendment 152 #
Motion for a resolution
Subheading 7 a (new)
Subheading 7 a (new)
Governance
Amendment 153 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23 c (new)
Paragraph 23 c (new)
23c. Calls on the Commission to propose a better SEPA governance, covering the organisational setup related to the development of the main features of payment services and of the implementation of the requirements which need to be met, while the development of technical and security standards would be organised separately to support the implementation of the related legislation;
Amendment 154 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23 d (new)
Paragraph 23 d (new)
23d. Considers it important to strengthen the SEPA governance and to give the renewed SEPA Council a stronger role and that this new governing body should consist of the main relevant stakeholders and be created in such a way that it provides a possibility for democratic control through the Commission and other European authorities; proposes that a renewed SEPA-Council should lead the work, identify a time schedule and work plan, decide on the priorities and major issues thus arbitrating disagreements between stakeholders, and democratic control should be ensured through the EC, ECB and EBA having a prominent role;
Amendment 155 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23 e (new)
Paragraph 23 e (new)
23e. Considers that the SEPA Council should be assisted by various technical committees, or "task forces" for e- payment, m-payment, cards, cash and other standardisation issues and ad hoc working groups; believes, therefore, that the current projects like the OSeC project for coordinating the implementation of the Evaluation and Certification Framework, the OScar project for coordinating the implementation of the Evaluation and Certification Framework or SecuRe Pay to provide common security solutions could benefit from attached to this structure;