The Law and Regulation of Payment Services: A Comparative Study

There is a widespread demand among businesses for more convenient and reliable international payment products, and inevitably this has led to calls for more predictable and consistent regulation of these products, especially in the light of such innovations as online payments and ‘stored value’ cards.

Recognizing that recurring risks tend to be dealt with in similar ways by most legal regimes, this study – the first of its kind – draws on a detailed analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of existing regimes to develop an international model which incorporates both the legal elements and their practical application. In building his model, the author addresses the fundamental questions in the law of payment services:

• Who bears the risk of unauthorised payments?
• What must be done about claims of error?
• When are payments completed so that they discharge the underlying liability?
• When can payments be reversed?

These issues are examined through in-depth descriptions of payment facilities as regulated in five key jurisdictions – Australia, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Singapore, and the United States – under the headings of scope, licensing, disclosure, obligations of the parties, liability, redress, and dispute resolution.

The five regimes are further measured against the key harmonization project in this field, the UNCITRAL Model Law on Credit Transfers. The discussion is illustrated with analyses of leading cases and a number of worked examples.

In summary, this very useful book synthesizes a logical and useful package of regulatory measures into a model that takes into account the lessons learnt in the regulation of payment services. Businesses will warmly welcome the study’s contribution toward reducing the cost of taking a product to market across multiple jurisdictions. Policymakers and legislators will find the task of comparing the various approaches to payment services regulation and analyzing their effectiveness greatly facilitated.