European Banking Authority recommends the use of contactless payments up to EUR50

In the light of the exceptional circumstances caused by the spread of COVID-19 across the globe, there is also a need to adopt appropriate measures to contribute to the protection of consumers and the orderly functioning of payment services across the EU, according to the European Banking Authority (EBA) statement on consumer protection and payment issues.

EBA encourages consumers and merchants to take necessary sanitary precautions when providing, or making use of, point-of-sales terminals to pay for goods in-store that require a PIN, including by considering all payment methods available, such as contactless or remote payments.

Also, EBA calls on payments services providers (PSPs) to contribute to measures that limit the spread of COVID-19 and, to that end, to facilitate consumers’ ability to make payments without the need for physical contact, by making use of the existing exemption from strong customer authentication (SCA) available for contactless payments at the point of sale under Article 11 of the RTS on SCA&CSC.

In the event that thresholds set by PSPs for using this exemption are below the threshold allowed under the RTS, the EBA additionally encourages PSPs to increase, where possible, these limits up to the maximum thresholds of EUR 50 per transaction as allowed under the RTS.

The EBA will also support issuing and acquiring payment service providers’ efforts to focus on their customers, by removing their NCA’s obligation to report by 31 March 2020 their readiness to meet the strong customer authentication requirements for e-commerce card-based transactions(set out in task 3 of Tables 1 and 2 of the EBA Opinion the migration to SCA). While all other requirements set out in the Opinion remain unchanged, the EBA will continue to monitor events and assess which, if any, additional measures need to be taken.