NSPK encourages acquiring banks to fight fraudsters

The operator of the Mir payment system, the National Payment Card System (NSCP), is looking for ways to encourage acquiring banks to combat fraudulent schemes implemented through retail outlets. It is planned to sharply reduce the maximum percentage of such operations allowed from a regulatory point of view for banks, as well as tighten the system of fines. In case of serious violations, banks will be forced to compensate the victims for stolen funds.

During the conference on December 5, the NSPK announced plans to tighten the fight against fraud through payment terminals. We are talking about cases when funds are debited from the cardholder for an allegedly completed purchase in a store that he did not make. In this case, the issuing bank that issued the card will appeal the transaction. However, it is not always possible to return the funds, since often special trade and service enterprises (TSEs) are created for this type of fraud, which collect money and quickly disappear.

As Alexey Ipatov, head of the Antifraud department of NSPK, explained, from September 1, the maximum volume of fraudulent transactions for acquirers has been reduced from 50 to 5 bp. p., where 1 b. p. corresponds to the loss of 1 kopeck. for 100 thousand rubles. shopping. At the same time, the deadline for submitting information about an incident was halved – from 30 to 15 days. In addition, now when calculating control values, it is not the date of submission of information about fraud that is recorded, but the date of the operation.

According to the Central Bank, the volume of card transactions to pay for goods and services in the first quarter of 2023 amounted to 12.15 trillion rubles, in the second quarter – 13.5 trillion rubles. Mir cards account for about half (49.4%) of all transactions.

The tightening of requirements was a consequence of an increase in fraud in 2023 – from 0.59 bp. p. throughout the Mir payment system in the first quarter to 1.02 bp. p. in the third quarter. Alexey Ipatov explained to Kommersant that the previous requirements did not encourage acquirers to fight fraud in the merchants they service. “With the new level of control values, there are already several banks that have exceeded it, and a number of credit institutions whose values ​​are close to the maximum level,” he clarified.

According to Mr. Ipatov, banks have two months to correct the situation, otherwise they will be fined.

In the first quarter of 2024, control will be established not only over banks, but also over all serviced merchants. If their control value exceeds 25 b. p., there are more than 25 fraudulent transactions per month or their total amount is more than 250 thousand rubles, the merchant falls into the basic program of the penalty program. At 100 b. p., or more than 100 fraudulent transactions per month or more than 1 million rubles. per month, the merchant falls into the emergency penalty program.

In the basic program, the acquiring bank is given two months to correct the situation; if this does not happen, it is issued a fine. If the situation has not changed the next month, the fine increases, and the issuing bank, whose clients lost money in the merchant, will have the opportunity to appeal fraudulent transactions. The acquiring bank must return the funds. Alexey Ipatov is confident that this amount will be significantly higher than the amount of fines imposed on the acquirer NSPK.

In the case of an emergency program, the fine and challenge window may appear in the first month of detection of a significant amount of fraud.

If the situation is not corrected, then the fines will increase and the challenge window will expand, after which the bank will undergo an NSPK audit.

The first fine to the bank for finding each merchant service it serves in the penalty program is planned to be set at 50 thousand rubles; if the situation repeats, the fine will increase to 250 thousand rubles, then to 500 thousand rubles. etc.

Experts note that the sharp increase in the rate of stolen funds “should have forced the NSPK to take decisive action.” According to the head of the board of the Financial Innovations association, Roman Prokhorov, “in the conditions of insufficient control of acquiring banks over connected merchants, a number of them were purposefully used for fraudulent transactions on customer cards.”

An independent expert in the payment card market, Dmitry Vishnyakov, believes that now the acquiring bank will have to invest more in protection against fraud: “This is exactly what the NSPK measures are aimed at.” But increasing liability for fraud, in his opinion, will lead to increased costs for banks, which in turn will require compensation – either by increasing tariffs for retail outlets, or by reducing the interbank commission set by the payment system operator.

Maxim Builov