Among the stories covered last month by the Banking Technology team for our Sibos Daily News sibling was the French Banking Federation’s reaction to a statement by the European Commission and the European Central Bank in early September, saying they would only support the idea of a multilateral interchange fee for Sepa direct debits for a strictly limited transitional period and provided “that such fees were objectively justified”.

The story came to our attention following talk of a “French Sepa strike” among some Sibos delegates. French banks, it turned out, were not pleased by the surprise announcement about interchange fees and the FBF said in a statement the EC’s position undermined “months of work and may jeopardise the general implementation of the Sepa project”, adding that its members were “not in a position to continue their projects until they have examined all the consequences of the European Commission’s stance.”

The day the article ran in Sibos Daily News, the head of the FBF’s systems and means of payments unit, Bernard Dutreuil,  showed up in the press room to complain about the story, which he contended was inaccurate. He was especially unhappy about the fact that the French banks were described as isolated in their attitude.

He explained FBF was not one voice in 72 in the European Payment Council plenary, but “the voice of the whole French banking community, about 400 banks and of course the 5 other French EPC member banks.”

Yes, Sir. But France is still only one country among all Sepa participants, all of which are coming from a different domestic system, with various business models. Granted, the European Savings Bank Group also expressed its concern, as we had pointed out in the story, but at no point did it say it couldn’t continue with its Sepa projects. French banks, however, said they were “not in a position” to do so.

But there too, we had (apparently) got the story completely wrong, as our FBF visitor insisted we had misunderstood the organisation’s statement. As it turns out, while French banks “are not in a position to continue their projects,” it is inaccurate to write that they are suspending them. I have to admit the nuance is lost on me, as it apparently was on the Sibos delegates commenting on the announcement.

“We didn’t announce that we are suspending SDD projects,” Mr Dutreuil claimed in the email he fired off the day after he came by to see us. “We said that considering the new decision publicly made by an EC/ECB press release, we need to have discussions with other stakeholders, corporates and consumers in our national Sepa Committee (co-chaired by Banque de France and FBF) to make them aware of such a change and see the impact on user behaviour and on SDD volume. We regret not to have had such an impact analysis from the EC. We also regret that late communication because in such an industrial process, we need time for IT, organisation and commercial work.”

I am more than happy to report this clarification of FBF’s position, but while reporters should indeed be careful what they write, the same goes for the issuers of press releases. And when you tell the market and your European partners you are not in a position to continue your Sepa projects, you must assume they will understand it to mean just that.

Filed under: Payments, regulation, Sibos