Recent regulatory developments focussed on the payments sector.

Contents

• Hogan Lovells Global Payments Newsletter
• 2023 SEPA payment scheme rulebooks: EPC to publish in May 2022

Hogan Lovells Global Payments Newsletter

We have published the September 2020 edition of our Global Payments Newsletter. Key developments of interest over the last month include:

• United Kingdom: the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has published its interim report on its market review into the supply of card-acquiring services.
• France: the French Observatory for the Security of Payment Means has published a communication on the implementation of strong customer authentication under PSD2.
• Singapore: the Monetary Authority of Singapore has published a consultation paper on a proposed new Omnibus Act for the financial sector.

2023 SEPA payment scheme rulebooks: EPC to publish in May 2022

The European Payments Council (EPC) has announced that it will publish all Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) 2023 payment scheme rulebooks and related implementation guidelines in May 2022 instead of November 2022. The 2022 SEPA payment scheme rulebook change management cycle will start six months earlier.

The EPC explains that, in September 2020, the EPC decided to migrate all of its SEPA payment schemes to the 2019 version of the ISO 20022 message standard by 19 November 2023 (that is, the entry-into-force date of the 2023 EPC SEPA payment scheme rulebooks). The EPC is concerned that this implementation, combined with potential new or amended business and/or functional rules in a single rulebook release, may form a challenge for some SEPA payment scheme participants.

Therefore, it is bringing forward the publication date of all 2023 EPC SEPA payment scheme rulebooks and related implementation guidelines to May 2022, instead of November 2022.

In light of this, stakeholders are now invited to submit change requests to the SEPA Credit Transfer and Direct Debit rulebooks exceptionally by 30 June 2021 instead of 31 December 2021.

The EPC stresses that it considers this timeline change as an exception and does not plan to repeat it for any future change management cycles.

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