The Minister of Economy, Sergio Massaspoke in favor of the repeal of a rule that modified the mechanism that users of electronic wallets used to fund the accounts, at the same time that he announced an agreement with the fintech to reduce the commissions that SME businesses must pay for the use of the platforms.
In this way, the central bank would roll back today the measure adopted through Communication “A” 7841, which provided for disabling the immediate debit mechanism (“Debin”) to deposit money into virtual wallets from bank accounts starting next December 1 and replacing it with another, called “Immediate Pull Transfers”. Specific,what are the changes?
Digital wallets: the changes that will impact users
1- Bonus for payments with QR of Mercado Pago. The fee to collect with QR using money in a Mercado Pago account is reduced for new businesses that join the system, for sales of up to $330,000 (1000 UVAs) or the first three months, whichever occurs first.
2- Reduction of commissions for payments with QR with credit card. The commissions paid by SME businesses for payments through QR with a credit card are reduced, going from 6.99% + VAT to 5.77% + VAT with immediate accreditation.
The validity of this measure would be three months since, if elected president, Massa intends to regulate the operation of the digital moneyly the virtual wallets.
The conflict between Mercado Pago and the Central Bank
Since the sanction of the Communication “A” 7841, On September 14, a conflict broke out between the Central bank, banking entities and fintech companies, with Payment Market to the head.
According to the fintechs, the mechanism of “Immediate Pull Transfers” cwhich was intended to update the account funding mechanism was not sufficiently tested – it began to operate partially last August – and required validation mechanisms that generated “frictions” that, in some cases banksforced users to go to an ATM to obtain the key (token) necessary to validate the account receiving the money.
“The replacement of Debin –effective and safe operation, which has achieved excellent adoption – for an incipient tool with a wide margin of improvement still to be covered, presents a risk of increasing fraudulent operations. At the same time, it encourages the use of cash or other traditional means of payment, given the impossibility of using this tool as a means of funding,” the companies said in a statement from the Argentine Fintech Chamber.
However, Payment Market He went further and, this Monday, issued a statement in which he accused banking entities of promoting a change in regulations that sought to “prevent 4 million people from generating returns.”
According to Mercado Pago, the Debin “is the safest means of transfer that exists” and “has the lowest fraud rate recorded in the country (0.02% of total transactions)”, so the replacement “is negative”.
“The solution they propose, ‘Pull Immediate Transfers’, still has flaws and does not serve as a replacement,” they noted.
As argued from the Central bank, The measure had already been discussed in the Interbank Payment Methods Commission of the Argentine Republic (Cimpra) as part of a transition towards international regulations, which establishes this type of mechanisms for linking bank and fintech accounts of the same person.
In that sense, they pointed out that the rule sought to limit the Debin to payment operations, while transfers between accounts will be made through the payment system. Immediate Pull Transfers.
Even so, the conflict between banking entities and Mercado Pago has several chapters, of which Debin is only the most recent.
Weeks ago, the BCRA had ordered that, as of September 1, there would be ato “full interoperability” of QR codes, so that any payment application – banking or fintech – could use any QR code to pay through it with all payment methods (cash in account and debit and credit cards).
However, from Mercado Pago – the main owner of the QR codes- They said they were not ready “for security reasons” and asked for an eight-month extension.
“If we do not agree on standards and commercial win-win, it is like any non-banking player coming and saying to your ATM network: ‘There, now I want to use it for free.’ We heard the counterproposal coming to tie this match,” said Paula Arregui, CCO of Payment Market, during a recent event, about the full interoperability of QR codes.
Source: Ambito
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