The area of card payments shows that the single market is still a case of work in progress and that a lot more can be done in the long-term interest of the customer.
She highlighted the work done in the area of SEPA for cards. To bring the cards dossier forward, she said, requires urgently tackling three important issues: the business rules, the technical standards and finally one or more new European card schemes.
She focused on the following points:
· The SEPA Cards Framework (SCF), the ECB’s “SEPA for Cards” report of November 2006, and the additional explanations provided by the EPC at the request of the Commission’s DG Competition, set out the basic rules for SEPA for cards. However, as she has said on other occasions, the SCF is a general document requiring further elaboration.
· Technical standards. The EPC has published the “SEPA Cards Standardisation Volume” which is now available to the market for comments. Moreover, various market initiatives have developed or are developing more detailed standards. The EPC will need to adopt these detailed standards to complement its own work in the field. This would be a guarantee for interoperability, security and market access.
· The new European card scheme. The ECB has made a clear request to the European banking industry for the creation of such a scheme. Joint research by De Nederlandsche Bank and the ECB has shown that a new European card scheme could provide a decisive impetus to solving interoperability and overcoming costly fragmentation in the European market for cards. Consumers and merchants in the card payments market are likely to benefit most from SEPA if there is sufficient competition.
She also welcomed the decision of the European Payments Council (EPC) to launch the SDD scheme in November 2009.
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