Payments, it changes again. The first written text of the 136-article maneuver approved by the Council of Ministers on Monday 21 November provides for two important innovations: the increase in the ceiling for the use of cash and the new exemptions from the Pos obligation, in addition to those already granted in October at tobacconists.
Cash, the ceiling rises to 5 thousand euros
The intervention on cash is the eighth in ten years, a sign of how much this is a “sensitive” matter in our country. Last February the Milleproroghe decree, thanks to an amendment approved in Parliament by the center-right (including the Fdi), had frozen the limit of 2 thousand euros for another year, postponing to 2023 the one thousand euro decalage originally envisaged by the Conte 2 government for 2022. As soon as the Meloni Executive took office, the new steering was promised, now ratified in the budget law: from 1 January the ceiling will rise to 5 thousand euros. The increase, strongly contested by the opposition, was initially included in the aid decree quater and then removed, due to lack of the requisites of necessity and urgency. But the League had assured that the law would come into play. And so it was.
A country dependent on cash
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has already publicly defended the decision to raise the threshold for cash payments, justifying it with the need to “parameterize the cash ceiling to the European average”. In nine countries, according to the photograph of the European Consumers Center, there are no limits. For the others, it ranges from the highest threshold ever (15,000 euros) in Croatia to the most severe (500 euros) in Greece. As the 2022 Report of The European House – Ambrosetti underlined, Italy is in 29th place in the world for the impact of cash on the economy and 24th out of 27 EU countries in the “Cashless Society Index”.
No more Pos obligation for mini-payments
Again in the direction of making the use of cash easier, the other novelty introduced in the budget law goes: for amounts of less than 30 euros, merchants will no longer be required to accept payments by credit and debit cards and fines will be suspended. The law provides that the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy decides within 180 days, therefore by June, «the exclusion criteria, in order to guarantee the proportionality of the sanction and to ensure the economy of the transactions in relation to the costs of the same ».
Sanctions suspended, the tape rewinds
The same article of the maneuver establishes that, pending the definition of the exclusion criteria, “the procedures and deadlines for the adoption of the sanctions are suspended”. The Pos obligation for merchants and professionals has existed on paper for ten years (it was introduced by the growth decree of the Monti government in 2012) but since then no Executive has ever managed to get the fines for defaulters off the ground. During the Draghi era, the finish line had seemed crossed: the first Pnrr decree, approved in December 2021, had established that the sanctions would become effective from 1 January 2023, and the second Pnrr decree, passed in April, had even brought forward the date as at 30 June 2022. The fine should have been 30 euros, increased by 4% of the value of the transaction for which payment acceptance was refused. Nothing to do. Now rewind the tape. New government, new carousel ride.