# Regulation (EU) No 260/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 March 2012 establishing technical and business requirements for credit transfers and direct debits in euro and amending Regulation (EC) No 924/2009 (Text with EEA relevance), Article 4: Interoperability

Extent: E+W+S+N.I.

1. Payment schemes to be used by UK-regulated PSPs for the purposes of carrying out credit transfers and direct debits shall comply with the following conditions:
(a) their rules are the same for UK credit transfer transactions and for cross-border credit transfer transactions within the qualifying area and similarly for UK direct debit transactions and cross-border direct debit transactions within the qualifying area; and
(b) the participants in the payment scheme represent a majority of PSPs within a majority of EEA States, and constitute a majority of PSPs within the territory of the EEA states, taking into account only PSPs that provide credit transfers or direct debits respectively.
For the purposes of point (b) of the first subparagraph, where neither the payer nor the payee is a consumer, only EEA States where such services are made available by PSPs and only PSPs providing such services shall be taken into account.
2. The operator or, in the absence of a formal operator, the participants of a retail payment system within the United Kingdom shall ensure that their payment system is technically interoperable with other retail payment systems within the qualifying area through the use of standards developed by international or European standardisation bodies. In addition, they shall not adopt business rules that restrict interoperability with other retail payment systems within the qualifying area. Payment systems designated under the Financial Markets and Insolvency (Settlement Finality) Regulations 1999 shall only be obliged to ensure technical interoperability with other payment systems designated either under those Regulations or under Directive 98/26/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 May 1998 on settlement finality in payment and securities settlement systems.
3. The processing of credit transfers and direct debits shall not be hindered by technical obstacles.
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(6.) Paragraph 1 is to be read subject to any temporary exemption from the conditions set out in point (b) of the first subparagraph of that paragraph that may be granted under paragraph 4 of this Article as it applies in the European Union.

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Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/2012/260/article/4 (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/eu-regulation-2012-260/article-4
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.