This article outlines the impact Covid-19 is having on payment processors, contactless payment limits and strong customer authentication.

Cashflow and payment processors

Retailers need to ensure that they continue to receive timely settlement from their payment processors – any experiencing higher than usual chargebacks or refund rates should be in active communication with their gateway and payment processors to ensure that these are being managed appropriately and consistently with agreement terms

Contactless: what's changing?

• The finance and payments industry, in conjunction with the retail sector, have agreed to increase the maximum per transaction limit for contactless payments to £45
• This change will be rolled out from 1 April 2020
• The change to the contactless limit will be permanent - the payments industry have been considering the change due to calls for wider retail use cases (eg HS2 journeys) for some time
• FCA has also announced a period of regulatory flexibility for implementation of contactless counters, required by PSD2, which trigger a chip & PIN transaction (i.e. a cumulative volume (5 transactions) or cumulative value (£130)) - this gives issuers the flexibility to choose to revert to their previous volume or value counters or to retain the new counters

What do retailers need to do?

• System updates - terminals are either owned and provided by acquirers (bank-owned terminals) or are bought and maintained by the retailers themselves (retailer-owned terminals) - with any limit change, all of these terminals and the supporting systems run by third parties need to be updated
• The main focus of acquirers will initially be on supermarkets, pharmacies and possibly petrol stations
• Many large retailers have already implemented the changes or have such projects underway/in their pipeline
• UK Finance are overseeing the roll out by holding weekly implementation calls which are also open to any retailer who wishes to join (invites through trade associations such as BRC and CBI)

Strong Customer Authentification

The timetable for implementation of the more stringent e-commerce customer identification requirements continues to be in flux, with 14 March 2021 currently remaining the end-date. The FCA has said that it is willing to agree a short extension to the implementation road map and is 'working closely with the industry to agree any changes to the milestones and timelines' – more to follow.