Which of the SCA deadlines are you working towards?

Which of the SCA deadlines are you working towards?

Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements officially went into effect on September 14^th, 2019. On October 16^th, 2019, the European Banking Authority announced that the new SCA requirements should be fully enforced by 31 December 2020.

As of June 25^th, 2020, most European regulators have agreed to this new timeline, with one exception: the UK. The UKs regulatory Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) had previously announced an 18-month delay – requiring additional authentication for online payments beginning March 2021.

In the exceptional circumstances of the Covid crisis, the FCA gave notice in May 2020 to UK industry of an extension to the earlier deadline providing an additional 6 months to implement strong customer authentication (SCA) for e-commerce.

After the newer September 14^th, 2021 deadline, any firm that fails to comply with the requirements for SCA will be subject to full FCA supervisory and enforcement action. Therefore, UK firms are required to take all necessary steps to comply with the revised detailed phased implementation plan and critical path to avoid the risk of enforcement action.

In the meantime, leading FinTech and Payment Gateway providers firms including Cardstream have continued with the necessary preparatory activities such as the provision of sandbox testing environments so that their partners and merchants can complete the robust and very necessary, end-to-end testing.

If you take away anything from this article, please note.

• PSD2 SCA comes into force across the EU on January 1^st, 2021 and in the UK on September 14th 2021. These dates are already later than originally planned, and the European Banking Authority (EBA) has indicated there won’t be any further extensions
• Although the UK enforcement date is later than the EU date, UK-based merchants who sell to EU customers, or process transactions paid for using EU-issued cards, must be ready by the earlier date of January 1st 2020
• While retailers in the UK will not see strict enforcement until September 2021, if they want to sell cross-border in Europe, the earlier deadline will apply to those sales

As FinExtra reported yesterday, the travel industry is just one the industry verticals having to work against the EU deadline as opposed what’s in place for the UK.

If you’re payment gateway provider isn’t helping and supporting your readiness for looming SCA deadlines, please call 0345 009 9575 or contact partnersuccess@cardstream.com today.