And so on Thursday 30 June “the harsh law of the Pos” comes into force. Mandatory payments by credit card in all businesses. Penalty, a fine of 30 euros plus 4 percent of the denied transaction. In a country still tied to paper and black payments, that is to tax evasion, we would be delighted. Long last. But no. The rule approved in great haste by Parliament in the decree implementing the NRP seems to be made on purpose to become the usual missed opportunity for the legislator to make us take a leap forward. Meanwhile, there is the fine mechanism: it is the customer who must report the operator. Imagine the scene: I have to pay for a coffee, that tells me that the Pos is broken, the Pos is always broken in certain shops, I go out, call a guard and file a complaint.
Digitization
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And then I probably change neighborhood. But the real weakness of the law is in having considered only one type of digital payment: the one with the Pos, in fact, an acronym that stands for Point of Sale, a small object to which the credit card can be approached for the transaction, obviously paying various commissions. But does the Minister of the Economy Daniele Franco know that this law wanted, that electronic payments can be made, and therefore tracked, even without a credit card and with almost zero commissions? Technology has made great strides in recent years: you bring your mobile phone closer to that of the merchant, write the amount due and the money transfers, as if by magic.
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There is even an Italian startup, Satispay, which has built a company on this thing, which is trying to scale up in Europe. And in fact in Belgium from 1 July the compulsory payments will be electronic ones, all of them, not only those with the Pos. But we do not love startups so much that they make rules – contrary to European principles – which seem to be made on purpose to damage them. And to damage innovation. And to force traders to pay a new tax that could have been avoided.