Payment Services Directive adopted the 27 European finance ministers,
meeting in Brussels, agreed on the text of the Payment Services
Directive. Now nothing more stands in the way of the Directive being
passed by the European Parliament (REP) in April. The adoption of the
Payment Services Directive is a prerequisite for the creation of a
Single Eur Payments Area and new pan-European payment products (standard
European credit transfer, known as European direct debt, in short: SEPA
products).
The Directive creates equal legal conditions for payments in the
European Union. The consequence is that every cross-border payment in
the EU can be treated as a domestic payment. This brings benefits not
only for the providers of payment services, but for the customer as well.
The Directive creates in the Member States of the European Union the
legal prerequisites for making Europe-wide payments as simple,
inexpensive and secure as national payments. Technical and legal
barriers are removed, consumer protection is improved and the efficiency
and security of payments in all Member States is enhanced. Up to now
cashless payments have been carried out according to different rules in
each Member State. Therefore it is often hard for customers to pay for
something from another EU country by direct debit. Since up to now there
have been no harmonized clearance periods, cross-border payments from
one EU country to another take varying amounts of time, in some cases as
long as eight days.
These large divergences make it practically impossible for providers of
payment services to compete across national frontiers. The Directive is
now meant to create legal security for all providers of payment services
in the European Union. Legal security facilitates competition and is
needed if providers are to invest on a large scale in new payment
products and new systems for conducting payments.
Before the Directive can enter into force, it must still be approved by
the European Parliament (EP). The EP has scheduled a vote on this for
April.
