Notice of the making of this Statutory Instrument was published in

“Iris Oifigiúil” of 17th November, 2020.

I, PASCHAL DONOHOE, Minister for Finance, in exercise of the powers conferred on me by section 3 of the European Communities Act 1972 (No. 27 of 1972) and for the purpose of giving further effect to Regulation (EU) No. 751/2015 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2015¹ , hereby make the following regulations:

1. (1) These Regulations may be cited as the European Union (Interchange Fees for Card-based Payment Transactions) (Amendment) Regulations 2020.

(2) These Regulations shall come into operation on 9 December 2020.

2. The European Union (Interchange Fees for Card-based Payment Transactions) Regulations 2015 ( S.I. No. 550 of 2015 ) are amended by the substitution of the following Regulation for Regulation 5:

“5. Payment service providers shall not offer or request a per transaction interchange fee of more than 0.10% of the value of the transaction for any domestic debit card transaction.”.

GIVEN under my Official Seal,

12 November, 2020.

PASCHAL DONOHOE,

Minister for Finance.

EXPLANATORY NOTE

(This note is not part of the instrument and does not purport to be a legal interpretation.)

This Statutory Instrument (SI) amends SI 751 of 2015 on Interchange Fees.

Regulation 5 of SI 751 of 2015 is replaced in order to update a provision that falls away on the 09 December 2020. This was a discretion contained in the Interchange Fee Regulation that Ireland chose to avail of in 2015.

The change to the existing legislation involves the replacement of a weighted average approach set out in Regulation 5 to capping interchange fees for consumer debit transactions with a per transaction cap approach.

1 OJ L 123, 19.05.2015, p.1