Reminder on consumer choice in Europe

Checkout.com would like to remind you of European Union consumer choice regulations. If your customers pay using a co-badged card that supports more than one payment scheme, these regulations mean you must let them choose which payment scheme they pay through.

The most common co-badged card in Europe is Cartes Bancaires in France.

Updates to Visa’s consumer choice rules

From May 1, 2024, Visa will update its rules to clarify the merchant requirements on how to implement clear and transparent choice for co-badged cardholders in the European Economic Area (EEA).

This includes the introduction of a transparency test, which specifies that merchants must:

• Effectively communicate the right to choose between payment schemes or payment applications
• Use transparent visual presentation of the available payment schemes or payment applications, so the cardholder is clear on their options and can choose their preferred scheme or application freely
• Offer a clear and simple selection mechanism, without any unnecessary steps, that allows the cardholder to select without any merchant input

Visa may audit merchants’ payment pages to ensure that you’re compliant with these requirements. They’ve also published a document that provides helpful illustrations of best practices around consumer choice.

Download Visa's best practice guide

How to offer consumer choice

If you use our Frames solution, you can initialize an added iframe using the schemeChoice configuration option. This automatically detects if a cardholder pays with a co-badged card and renders consumer choice.

View our docs

To implement consumer choice on your payment pages, you should take the following steps:

• Prompt customers to enter their PAN after they choose their payment card. If their card is co-badged, you should prompt them to choose their payment scheme and give them a reasonable amount of time to do this.
• Use the same visual quality, sizing, and clarity for all supported card schemes and logos on your online payment pages and during the scheme choice process.
• Explain why you’re asking the customer to choose their scheme, using a hover-over or long-tap “info box” or similar mechanism. 
• If you let customers store payment details for future use as card-on-file or token-on-file, you should save their scheme choice and give them a way to change their scheme in the future.
• Process following stored credential transactions with the same payment scheme the customer initially chose, with the chosen scheme name and logo displayed if they make a repeat payment on your website.