Cheaper fees for Europeans when paying by credit card

EPP Group Members of the European Parliament, Diogo Feio and Pablo Zalba Bigedain will be responsible for the Parliament’s input on the new Payment Package approved today by the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee.

The new legislation was announced by the European Commission in July, updating the original content in order to standardise the rules for online transactions and payment cards. Every Member State has diverse and unclear laws regulating online and card payments. This causes a fragmentation of the payments market with an estimated a cost of €130 billion a year (more than 1% of EU GDP).

It also updates the Regulation on ‘interchange fees’, which are paid by banks to each other for each card payment. Regulating these overpriced taxes will benefit retailers and consumers.

"Since I started working on the Multilateral Interchange Fees Regulation, my aim has been to strengthen the Single Market by establishing a level playing field for card payments and for companies at European Level", underlined Spanish MEP Pablo Zalba Bigedain.

Portuguese MEP Diogo Feio added: "Today, we have approved a text with a significant majority that will increase consumer protection and bring more safety and more transparency to the market of online payments.”

"I believe that through the Payment Package we will ensure greater transparency in the payments market, ensuring that both retailers and consumers know how much they are paying when they acquire a product with a debit or credit card", said Zalba Bigedain.

"Very important is the achievement of the obligation to create a Consumers Rights leaflet to be available to all European consumers making sure that EU legislation is comprehensible and available to all EU consumers", concluded Diogo Feio MEP.