On July 2, 2024, the agreement adopted by the Board of the Central Bank of Chile to update the regulation of the issuance and operation of Payment Cards was published in the Official Gazette.
Among the changes introduced to the regulations, the following stand out:
a) Electronic Transfers for Payment Cards with Provision of Funds
Issuers of Payment Cards with Provision of Funds (“Prepaid Cards”), may develop payment schemes in which the cards they issue are used to make transfers of funds between the accounts of the issuer itself.
Likewise, non-bank issuers of Prepaid Cards that develop this business model must contemplate procedures that allow their cardholders to make payments or transfers of funds to other accounts, which may correspond, indistinctly, to the same issuer or to other entities.
The liquidity reserve for non-bank issuers of Prepaid Cards requires maintaining an amount equivalent to deposits minus payments made. Transfers made between accounts of the issuer itself, as indicated above, will not be counted for the discount of payments in the constitution of the legal reserve.
b) Update of the regulation applicable to Payment Service Providers (“PSPs”)
From now on, PSPs that settle payments to merchants will be required to incorporate as Payment Card Operators and register with the Register of Payment Card Operators (“Registry”) maintained by the Financial Market Commission (“CMF”) at an earlier stage.
Thus, those PSPs whose operations are between 0.5% and 1% of the total settled transactions in the market must be constituted as “Sub-Acquiring Operators”, register in the Registry and will be subject to the supervision of the CMF under criteria of proportionality in prudential requirements.
(c) Regulation of cross-border acquiring
The conditions are established so that operators incorporated in Chile can directly make the affiliation and transfer payments to businesses abroad. For such purposes, operators must be registered in the Registry, only electronic transfers made with cards issued in the country may be processed from Chile and as long as the activity is not prohibited in the destination countries.
Although the regulation comes into force immediately, a period of gradual implementation is contemplated so that companies can adapt to the new requirements established by the Central Bank of Chile.
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Contact: For more information, please contact: Jorge Timmermann Partner jtimmermann@dlapiper.cl |
