National Bank of Poland’s Payment System Council recommends the payment services laws to be significantly changed

On 22^nd October 2021, the Payment System Council (RSP|NBP) for the National Bank of Poland (NBP) published its recommendations on actions to reduce fraudulent transactions in retail payments in Poland. The recommendations of RSP|NBP are touching the following four fields: (i) legal framework, (ii) processes, (iii) technology, and (iv) education.

The recommendations in question include inter alia the following:

1. introducing legal measures enabling the exchange of legally protected information between entities from various sectors (banking, telecommunications, insurance, non-banking payment service providers),
2. introducing legal restrictions on the operation of groups dealing with investment fraud and the free execution of operations related to fraudulent trading in cryptocurrencies and/or on the forex market, including the introduction of:
   1. capacity for banks to effectively block suspicious operations,
   2. capacity for banks for obtaining additional data, e.g. geolocation data or port numbers of devices with Internet access;
3. introducing a solution enabling the verification of the compliance of the recipient’s account number with his/her personal data (name and surname) before executing the transaction (an equivalent for the British “Confirmation of Payee” system);
4. mass usage of the geo-blocking for non-EU card payments;
5. introducing of an equivalent for chargeback service in non-card payment schemes, including within the BLIK payment scheme;
6. creating a national anti-fraud system, within which the full picture of money flows, information and links between entities could be monitored, as currently this cannot be observed at the level of individual banks and other payment services providers.

The recommendations by NBP are non-binding, but will likely affect the direction of changes in the Polish payment services and banking regulations.