New Security Rules of the European Union for Contactless Payments

10.03.2020

The European Payment Services Directive PSD2 requires the input of a PIN with a contactless card payment

In order for the cardholders to be secure and protected, The European Payment Services Directive PSD2 requires the input of a PIN number with a contactless card payment when:

        -   We carry out a 6th  consecutive contactless transaction without a PIN (under or precisely 50 BGN)
or
        -   The total amount of our contactless transactions, for which we did not input a PIN, reach 300 BGN

After each input of a PIN, the process begins again. In other words, the PIN is required on every 6th transaction and on every transaction after accumulating 300 BGN in card payments. Which of the two possible criteria described above is used, depends on which bank is the issuer of the card.

        -   Users will not find a difference and/or have difficulties, apart from the described cases above when the POS terminal requires the input of a PIN even for amounts up to 50 BGN in case we do a 6th consecutive transaction

        -   There are possible cases when certain POS terminals do not meet the new rules and therefore lead to a rejection of the transaction. In this case it is necessary to start a transaction and the card to be put in the POS terminal for contact payment and the user to input their PIN.

It is expected, all POS terminals to meet the new rules until 31th March 2020 but few exceptions in the period prior to this are possible. We should introduce all employees and users to the new rules, what to expect and how to react in case their transaction is rejected.