11 August 2014
AIME, together with the Mobile Broadband Group (www.mobilebroadbandgroup.com) and PhonepayPlus (www.phonepayplus.org) has written to Ms. Andrea Leadsom MP, Financial Secretary to the Treasury to seek support of the UK Treasury in blocking proposed changes to the European Payment Services Directive (PSD) that will affect the operation of most of the premium rate industry and move mobile and fixed line services into Financial Regulation.
As the proposed changes were not justified by any loopholes or exploits created through the 2007 Payment Services Directive and the new wording for exempting telecommunication providers would force them to make significant architectural and operational changes to support financial type payments (or kill nearly a third of their premium rate business), AIME has been lobbying since September 2013 to suppress the change.
Proposals for revisions to the exemption wording by the EU Council have been seen by AIME and while improved will limit the per transaction and per month consumer expenditure in contradiction to regulatory changes that increase consumer spend limits on telecoms accounts.
AIME, MBG and PPP worked with the UK Treasury to input the UK concerns to EU, but AIME feels that these concerns are not getting the priority treatment that is required to ensure UK interests (which are reflected at least by Ireland France and Czech Republic) are robustly protected.
As a result, the letter to Andrea Leadsom is designed to improve awareness of our concerns to a higher level and at time of writing, a response has been received from the Treasury
AIME Members can access the letter here
