Payment refused. Because the current account is based in another European country. It has often happened in Italy too, but it happens in various states of the Union. Although it is in effect illegal, given that there is a European Sepa regulation (260/2012) which has opened up the single payments market. In fact, since 2014 it is possible to send and receive payments to and from accounts in 33 countries of the continent (including 6 non-EU countries) as if they were all in the same territory.
A nice convenience for those who want to use goods and services even from abroad or for those who temporarily move to another European state, since they do not need to open a new account. But some companies, seven years after the entry into force of the SEPA, continue to deny this right. One of the last was Findomestic – which in the meantime has corrected the shot – sanctioned by the Antitrust for 600,000 euros, but in 2019 the fine was passed to the telephone companies Vodafone, Wind and Fastweb for the same reason.
For this reason, some payment services such as Wise, Revolut, N26, Raisin, SumUp and Klarna have launched the acceptmyiban.org initiative: a site where consumers can easily report cases of discrimination of their Iban by foreign companies. . The information sent – anonymously – to the platform is then transmitted to the competent authorities (in Italy it is Antitrust) and to the European Commission. Individual citizens could do it too, but the initiative is designed to simplify the procedure: the financial institutions that have joined will take care of it.
“We ask all European consumers to stop taking no for an answer” explains Arunan Tharmarajah, Head of Europe at Wise, according to whom “the customers of our companies are still victims, every day, of discrimination from Iban. Unfortunately, European consumers are mostly unaware that banks or merchants – or public bodies – are not allowed to do so ”.
But why after seven years are there companies that continue to deny payments from abroad, also risking heavy penalties? “In itself it is not an easy conduct to explain. Analyzing the recent cases that have occurred in Italy, these operations are not rejected for economic convenience but, more than anything else, for technical and administrative problems “explains the lawyer Emilio Graziuso, head of national coordination On the part of the consumer and author of Giuffré Francis Lefebvre . In most cases it is a problem of innovation: companies, or individual offices, which have not adapted their information systems to the “new” system.
All this despite already in 2015, continues Graziuso, “the Bank of Italy had asked to take all the technical, administrative and procedural measures to allow these payments, in order to fully realize the European payments market”.
But, apart from reporting the case on the acceptmyiban platform, what should the consumer do when he is refused to pay for a good or a service by a European company? Graziuso first of all advises “to send a warning to the company, invoking article 9 of the SEPA regulation 261/2012”. There is also the possibility of making a report to the Antitrust, “remembering, however, that the Agcm proceedings do not provide for consumer relief. Anyone who believes they have suffered damage will therefore have to take legal action. The first step is that of compulsory mediation. If it is a question of telephone companies, for example, you can contact the local Corecom ”concludes the expert.
Stefano Cherti, head of banks and insurance companies of the National Consumers Union and member of the Financial Banking Arbitrator, also stigmatizes this phenomenon as a mix between “provincialism and myopia of these companies which, a decade after the introduction of the single payments market, also see as foreign countries the other EU states and even the euro area. Many companies should invest more – continues Cherti – in the training of their staff, but Europe could also do something more to communicate goals, progress, achievements and rights gained in recent years, so that citizens and businesses are a little more aware of the opportunities offered by the single market ”.
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