Article 7 Separation of payment card scheme and processing entities

1.   Payment card schemes and processing entities:

2.   The competent authority of the Member State where the registered office of the scheme is located may require a payment card scheme to provide an independent report confirming its compliance with paragraph 1.

3.   Payment card schemes shall allow for the possibility that authorisation and clearing messages of single card-based payment transactions be separated and processed by different processing entities.

4.   Any territorial discrimination in processing rules operated by payment card schemes shall be prohibited.

5.   Processing entities within the Union shall ensure that their system is technically interoperable with other systems of processing entities within the Union through the use of standards developed by international or European standardisation bodies. In addition, payment card schemes shall not adopt or apply business rules that restrict interoperability among processing entities within the Union.

6.   The European Banking Authority (EBA) may, after consulting an advisory panel as referred to in Article 41 of Regulation (EU) No 1093/2010 of the European Parliament and of the Council (9), develop draft regulatory technical standards establishing the requirements to be complied with by payment card schemes and processing entities to ensure the application of point (a) of paragraph 1 of this Article.

EBA shall submit those draft regulatory technical standards to the Commission by 9 December 2015.

Power is delegated to the Commission to adopt the regulatory technical standards referred to in the first subparagraph of this paragraph in accordance with Articles 10 to 14 of Regulation (EU) No 1093/2010.