EBA identifies retail payments fraud, over-indebtedness as key policy challenges

April 26, 2023

The European Banking Authority (EBA) has published its 8^th annual consumer trends report that summarised trends in the consumer protection space.

The EBA’s report has identified two issues facing consumers in the EU, which include fraud in retail payments and over-indebtedness and arrears. These issues will shape the EBA’s consumer protection priorities over the next two years, it claims.

The report presents quantitative data for the retail banking products which covers mortgage credit, consumer credit, payment accounts, payment services, electronic money and deposits.

EBA’s report found that mortgage credit was affected by rising inflation and the normalisation of interest rates, while credit products were impacted by poor creditworthiness assessments and the rise of new and unregulated credit products. All these issues have been identified as key drivers for consumers’ repayment difficulties and, ultimately, over-indebtedness.

Fraud in retail payments, mainly perpetrated by new and different techniques implemented by fraudsters, was the other identified issue as experienced by consumers, based, inter alia, on fraud data collected from the year 2021 when financial institutions in several EU Member States had not complied yet with the requirements sets out in Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and the EBA’s technical standards on strong customer authentication.

According to the EBA, the report is based on information provided by the national authorities of the 27 EU Member States, national and EU consumer associations, the members of the ‘Financial Dispute Resolution Network’, and EU industry associations, and quantitative data from a variety of different sources.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) has published its peer review on authorisation of payment institutions and e-money under the revised PSD2.

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