Richtlijn betalingsdiensten aangenomen (en)

On Tuesday 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 (EP) in April. The adoption of the Payment Services Directive is a prerequisite for the creation of a Single Euro 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 harmonised 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.

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Date: 28.03.2007