EU Interchange Regulations

Important Information – European Legislation Applicable to Customers Based in EEA

EU Regulation has recently come into force that will impact businesses operating in the European Economic Area (EEA) which accept card transactions. It has various components, some of which have taken effect from 9 December last year, and some of which will be effective 6 months later (from 9 June 2016). Below are details of some of the key changes.

EU Regulation

Co-badging

Co-badged cards are cards that include 2 or more payment brands (e.g. Visa and MasterCard) or 2 or more payment applications of the same brand (e.g. Visa credit and Visa debit). Under EU rules, although you can still put in place a mechanism to select a default payment method for co-badged cards, your customer is entitled to override this and choose which of the payment methods they wish to use. Worldpay terminals already support this functionality in-store, and online sales are not affected. If your customer wants to use an alternative to the default payment method under a co-badged card, they can do this via the terminal. For online payments, they simply select the relevant payment method on the payment page and the transaction will be processed accordingly.

Honour All Cards relaxation

From 09 June 2016 you will no longer be obliged to accept all card types issued in the EEA within a particular card scheme (e.g. Visa or MasterCard). However, within a particular card scheme, if you wish to accept one type of consumer card within one of the three categories of consumer prepaid, consumer debit or consumer credit, you will still be obliged to accept all card types within that particular category. For example, if you wish to accept one type of EEA-issued Visa consumer debit card, you will need to accept all types of EEA-issued Visa consumer debit cards. One potential use of the new rules means that if you choose to accept consumer credit cards from a particular card scheme, you are no longer obliged to accept commercial credit cards from the same card scheme. To make use of these options, you need to define your preferences (preferred card schemes and categories accepted) at the point of entry of your premises and at the point of sale, as well as on your website payment pages. Note that, even if you choose not to exclude certain card categories, you can still “steer” customers to a particular form of payment. However, you cannot refuse any payment card on the basis of the identity of the issuer. These rules do not apply to cards issued outside the EEA. If you wish to accept cards within card scheme that are issued outside the EEA, you will still be obliged to accept all card types of that card scheme that are issued outside the EEA, regardless of category of card. Worldpay’s Customer Operating Instructions will be updated accordingly. If you are a customer using our Hosted Payment Pages on the Corporate Gateway and want to take advantage of this change to reduce the number of card types you will accept within a card scheme (a ‘limited acceptance merchant’) a technical change may be required. Please consult the following link for further guidance.

Unblending

To provide you with greater transparency on how the fees payable by you are calculated, we detail the merchant service charges, interchange fees and scheme fees we charge you with respect to transactions related to each category and brand of payment cards. The merchant service charges (being the total transaction based fees we charge you) are already set out in your agreement with us. Details on how you can access the interchange fee and scheme fee components of the merchant service charges payable by you are available here.

Availability of transaction reference data

Following the Interchange Fee Regulation introduced in 09 December 2015 we can make transaction level data available to you setting out the amount of the transaction, and the fees for that transaction, with the interchange fee being shown separately.

In accordance with the Interchange Fee Regulation, the information may be provided or made available on a monthly basis and may be aggregated.

Please note that we are unable to provide historic or backdated transaction data. If you wish to discuss obtaining this information, please contact your support team or Relationship Manager.

The legal things you need to know

Please note that the above is being provided for information purposes only. It does not change any terms of the agreement between us, nor does it change the current services that we provide, the way we currently authorise, process or settle your card payment transactions or how we charge you for your services.