Pursuant to the Payment Accounts Directive (2014/92/EU) (PAD), on September 22, 2016, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published a consultation paper on draft technical standards on fee terminology and disclosure documents under the directive.

The EBA will be holding a public hearing at its premises on 21 November 2016 and the consultation process closes on December 22, 2016.

Following the consultation the EBA set out the following three draft technical standards:

• Draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) setting out the standardized terminology for services that are common to at least a majority of member states (required under Article 3(4) of the PAD).
• Draft implementing technical standards (ITS) relating to the standardization of presentation format on the fee information document (FID) and its common symbol (required under Article 4(6) of the PAD).
• Draft ITS relating to a standardized presentation format of the statement of fees (SoF) and its common symbol (required under Article 5(4) of the PAD).

The draft technical standards aim to standardize eight terms for services that are to be used by payment service providers (PSPs), as well as providing consumer-friendly definitions of these terms in all EU official languages. The EBA identified the terminology based on the national provisional lists that member states have developed in line with the EBA’s March 2015 guidelines on standardized fee terminology (see Legal update, EBA final report and guidelines on national provisional lists of the most representative services linked to a payment account and subject to a fee).

PSPs will have to use the proposed standardized terminology in the pre-contractual FID and the post-contractual SoF disclosure documents.