Your new Global MSA – FAQs
Last updated: April 29, 2022
Please read through the following information to help answer any questions you might have about your new Global Merchant Services Agreement (Global MSA).
If it all makes sense, and you have no further questions, please refer back to the email you received from us to accept the new Global MSA and ensure that we can seamlessly continue processing for you.
The UK exited the European Union (EU) on January 31, 2020. However, until 11pm December 31, 2020, the UK is in the transition period, meaning that it remains part of the customs union and the single market.
Until now, our UK entity (Checkout Ltd) has passported its Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) license into Europe, meaning we could provide payment processing to non-UK European Economic Area (EEA) merchants from Checkout Ltd, in the UK.
However, from 11pm December 31, 2020 this will no longer be the case, so we have sent you a new agreement, with our French entity (Checkout SAS), which will enable you to continue using our services after the transition period ends.
In preparation for Brexit, we established a French entity (Checkout SAS) in July 2018, which was authorized as an electronic money institution (EMI) in France in July 2019. Since obtaining its EMI license, Checkout SAS has primarily been servicing the French market. This entity will deliver similar services to those we currently provide you with through our UK entity (Checkout Ltd) as our solution for Brexit.
So, despite Brexit, we will still be able to provide services to you in the European Economic Area (EEA) through our French entity (Checkout SAS), meaning no disruption to your payment services.
Provided you have accepted the new Global MSA with our French entity (Checkout SAS), you don’t need to do anything more. We will be in touch again to confirm when we direct your processing through our French BINs (French entity). This will rely on Checkout SAS’s license permissions with the French regulatory authority (the ACPR).
You should have received an email from us notifying you of the termination of your existing agreement and the need to enter into a new contract. Please forward the email to an authorized representative of your business and, if applicable, your legal team.
Your authorized representative should select the acceptance button in the email to accept the new Global MSA.
This will allow us to continue providing you with a seamless payment service after the transition period has come to an end.
The key advantages to moving our relationship to the Global Merchant Services Agreement (Global MSA) are:
- Coverage of several markets under a single agreement. The Global MSA caters for services under our principal memberships and partnerships in the UK, the EEA (through our French entity, Checkout SAS), Australia, USA, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Singapore. If you have local entities in these jurisdictions, those local entities would be able to easily use our local BINs and partnerships.
- Ready to accommodate our global expansion. We have ambitious expansion plans and hope to add several markets in the Americas and Asia-Pacific to our coverage. As we open new markets in 2021-2022, you will be able add your local entities to the Global MSA using a simple accession agreement. This could help you in utilising new principal memberships and leveraging our growing partnerships coverage.
- Support for our existing products and services. We are constantly enhancing our offering, so we have added relevant language to include new products currently available to our customers, such as Pay to Card (OCT/Visa Direct/Mastercard Send), Pay to Bank (remittance solution to bank accounts), Account Updater (verification and validation of card details) and Vault Exchange (routing transaction to third parties) products.
- Ready to support our product road map. The Global MSA supports future iterations of our settlement solutions, and risk and fraud management tools, while allowing access to our existing products when they become available in the markets covered in your Global MSA.
We will be in touch to confirm the exact date that your existing agreement will end and your transactions will start being processed by our French entity (Checkout SAS) under the Global MSA.
The email you received from us is written notice that your existing agreement is being terminated by us on not less than two months’ notice.
After Brexit, your data will be processed by Checkout SAS and hosted in the EEA, so no changes are expected from a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance perspective. You will continue to benefit from our existing GDPR compliance after Brexit.
Your statements will look the same as before. The only changes will be that the statement will be issued by Checkout SAS rather than Checkout Ltd, and you might see an additional section regarding your chargebacks and refunds related to your transactions with our UK entity.
Apart from the change of entities, you should not see any reporting changes.
Refunds will be processed through the Checkout Ltd entity, and you will be notified through your statement.
Brexit does not impact the application of Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). Both merchants and issuers in the UK, like merchants and issuers in the EEA, should apply SCA as per the revised Payment Services Directive’s (PSD2) regulatory technical standard, with the additional flexibility allowed by the FCA.
For further details, see here.
No. Recurring transaction exemptions are not based on the payments' jurisdiction, but on when the recurring contract was set up—before or after the enforcement of Strong Customer Authentication (SCA).
Also:
If the recurring contract was set up before the regulation, the initial payment may not have been SCA, but the recurring payments should reference the scheme transaction ID of the initial payment.
If the recurring contract was set up after the regulation, the initial payment must have been SCA, and the recurring payments should reference the scheme transaction ID of that initial payment.
This is true regardless of whether we or another acquirer processed the initial payment, and you can submit the scheme transaction ID of the initial payment with each recurring payment through our French entity, or any other acquirer.
Please contact your tax advisor directly. We cannot provide tax advice.
The UK left the EU on 31 January 2020 with a deal called the withdrawal agreement. However, this deal only set out the process of how the UK would leave the EU, not the future relationship.
It covered areas like citizens' rights, how to stop checks along the Irish border, and the UK’s financial settlement.
Negotiations on the future UK-EU relationship were always intended to be held after Brexit day and during the transition period.
The transition period is an 11-month phase which started immediately after Brexit day. It was designed to give both sides time to negotiate their future relationship.
The transition period will end on 31 December 2020, and the deadline for extending it has now passed.
See more details here.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulates the financial services industry in the UK. You can find out more from their website.