I'd like to find out more about how the Continuous Payment Authority (aka Recurring Payment) mechanism is regulated in the UK. Google seems to turn up only articles discussing disasters associated with it. Does anyone know whether I should ask the FSA, or APACS, or someone else about the rules everyone is supposed to play by?
Can we keep this thread strictly to establishing the rules, and avoid further disaster stories -- I suspect we've encountered them only too often!
Matti
A lawyer because it's standard contract law. Supplier supplies, you authorise them to debit your account for payment. Either party breaches contract, wronged party sues.
Daytona
Most amusing. In practice, merchants make recurring charges without apparently requiring to hold any particular form of authority to do so. Card issuers think they are required always to accept charges marked as CPA even if the card account has been 'closed'. From my researches so far, all we have is a Code of Practice issued by APACS to its members. In itself it's a waste of paper because the merchants who abuse the system will ignore it, and are often outside APACS's jurisdiction anyway.
Promisingly, the C of P document includes the following paragraph:
The card schemes [VISA, MasterCard etc] are working on ways that a cardholder may be able to cancel a recurring transaction through their credit card company; the final implementation is planned for April 2007.
I will now ask APACS where that plan stands at the moment.
Matti
How nasty. I take it from that that it was an arguement you were wanting rather than an answer which didn't suit your purpose.
Precisely. Thats why the previous answer was the correct one: There is (currently) no regulation other than simple contract law. And that, in turn, is why credit card CCAs are a very bad thing, because it can be costly and timeconsuming for someone to obtain redress for their misuse by the acquiring organisation.
Mark
It isn't regulated, which is why there are so many disaster stories. You have to rely on the Theft Act and contract law for redress.
But it's not as simple as that. The two main issues which propel things beyond the usual supplier-consumer situation are 1) the supplier can apparently decide unilaterally that a transaction which the consumer thought was a one-off was instead recurring, without needing any evidence to support this; and 2) the role of the credit card issuer, as payment agent for the consumer, is compromised because those guys apparently believe that a recurring transaction must be paid even though the card account agreement is terminated. That appears to breach usual contract law in a coach-and-horses manner.
Clearly the regulation is extremely deficient if this mechanism is going to be reliable. I still haven't heard back from APACS about their forecast that there should be new consumer protection by April 2007.
Matti
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