Ecommerce industry representatives unhappy with current RTS draft – Romanian Asociation of Online Merchants among them

Ecommerce Europe together with several organizations have signed a letter criticizing the European Commission’s current RTS draft, claiming that this will hinder European ecommerce. The 27 ecommerce organizations, which includes Ecommerce Europe, EMOTA, Digital Europe, ARMO, among others, urge the European Commission to work with the EBA to clarify certain legal aspects.

According to thePaypers.com, the main concerns expressed in the letter are related to SCA (strong customer authentication) which the current RTS draft requires to be used when processing transactions worth at least EUR 30. This would add an extra friction layer, which could hurt conversion across the industry, the signatories claim. They also think that in its current form, RTS “risks creating legal uncertainty for European sellers and traders.”

The ecommerce organizations support the EBA’s stand on Transaction Risk Analysis (TRA) and ask that “the text should be amended to explicitly acknowledge that merchants can perform TRA”. This means the retailers will be able to use information about their customers for fraud detection and protection.

Friction is also another important concern for the European ecommerce industry. The letter asks for low-risk transactions to be exempted from SCA. The current draft provides exemptions for recurring payments, but it the limitations to transactions of the same amount “would not allow online merchants to offer trials, discounts or upgrades to their customers.”

Finally, the letter’s authors ask that a corporate exemption should remain in the RTS, as “performing SCA for B2B payments provides no added value for consumers or security.”

For more information, you can also read the full letter addressed to European Commission.