Monitoring national retail payment systems

Option consommateurs considers that the establishment of a legislative framework covering all national retail payment systems will make it possible to adequately protect consumers, foster technological development and promote competition between payment service providers.
technological development and promote competition between payment service providers. In this, we are not pitting innovation against
on the contrary, we believe that these two interests can be reconciled in a win-win situation.

We hope that the development of this legislative framework will be based on a small number of fundamental principles, most of which were identified over ten years ago by the Canadian Consumer Initiative.
Canadian Consumer Initiative. These principles are :

• universality: the widest possible range of payment technologies should be covered by the legal framework;
• neutrality: all technologies should be governed by similar rules;
• security: payment technologies should be secure in every respect;
• imputability: the risk should be incurred by the party who creates it;
• transparency: rules, roles and prices should be clear to all;
• freedom of choice: debtors should be able to choose the payment method they prefer;
• accessibility: affordable and efficient payment methods should be available to all;
• applicability: consumers should be able to implement the rules easily.

None of these principles should be absolute; rather, they should be applied concurrently to deal with situations. A public body representing the interests of consumers should be vested with the regulatory power to set more precise terms of application, where necessary.

In the following pages, we will highlight, in the light of these principles, some of the issues we have identified in our contacts with consumers and in our research work.
research. Of course, the review of these issues is by no means exhaustive.