Today the Council of Latvijas Banka adopted several regulations to expand the range of statistical information to be reported on payment statistics in Latvia.
The "Regulation for Compiling the Payments Statistics Reports on Customer Payments" and the "Regulation for Compiling the Payments Statistics Reports on Card-Based Payment Transactions" have been adopted. According to these Regulations, Latvijas Banka will collect payment data that will not only improve the scope and quality of payments statistics and balance of payments statistics, but also enable an in-depth analysis of the data on payments, inter alia, card-based payment transactions.
The "Regulation for Compiling the Payments Statistics Reports on Customer Payments" has been developed pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2020/2011 of the European Central Bank of 1 December 2020 amending Regulation (EU) No 1409/2013 on payments statistics (ECB/2013/43) (hereinafter the 'Regulation on payments statistics'). According to the new requirements laid down in the Regulation on payments statistics, payment data will be available in a more detailed breakdown by country, payment initiation channel, payment authentication method and payment instrument scheme as well as on the new types of payment services and innovative payment opportunities (e.g. payment initiation services, mobile payment solutions and contactless payments). Data on instant payments executed via internet banking applications, ATMs or other terminals and mobile payment solutions will also be collected.
To optimise the process of reporting payment data, in the future data on fraudulent payment transactions will have to be reported to Latvijas Banka, while Latvijas Banka will transfer the data necessary for supervisory purposes to the Financial and Capital Market Commission. The reporting requirements relating to fraudulent payment transactions have remained unchanged.
The "Regulation for Compiling the Payments Statistics Reports on Card-Based Payment Transactions" has been developed in compliance with the new requirements that are laid down in the Regulation on payments statistics for the purposes of compiling balance of payments statistics and provide for the reporting of data on sent card-based payment transactions.
In view of the fact that, in terms of timeliness, quality and reliability, data on card-based payment transactions are the most appropriate data source for the estimation of the item "Travel" in balance of payments statistics and the e-commerce transactions, and that the rapid changes occurring in the economic situation in response to the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted insufficient timeliness of the current data that are also necessary for economic forecasting purposes, this Regulation has introduced additional requirements (a wider scope of data and a higher frequency of reporting) for those reporting entities whose market share in the respective payment card handling segment accounts for at least 5%.
The Regulation will enter into force on 1 August 2021, while the data reporting, according to the Regulation, will start in 2022.