European payments: updated charge options for Intra-European Economic Area payments (Payment Services Directive II)

Last updated: 16 January 2018

From 6 January 2018, we have updated HSBCnet in line with particular requirements of the European Union’s new Payment Services Directive II (PSD2). As part of this Directive, any transaction charges for payments within the European Economic Area (EEA) will be shared between the payer and the payee.

What’s changing?

As of 6 January, we have updated the available charge options in HSBCnet as follows:

For payments between accounts held in EEA countries (all currencies):
All transaction charges will now be shared between the payer and the payee. HSBCnet will only accept payment instructions with the ‘Share’ charge option selected.
For payments from German accounts to accounts in other EEA countries (all currencies):
When making a payment from a German account, you can choose to share the charges or pay all charges from the German debit account. As such, you are able to submit payments on HSBCnet with either ‘Share’ or ‘Debit account’ (all charges are withdrawn from the debit account) charge option selected.

What does this mean for me?

The following information outlines how this change impacts your HSBCnet payments:

Priority Payments (on-screen in HSBCnet):
From 6 January, Priority Payments screens only provide the 'Share' charge option for you to select. If you’re debiting a German account, both the ‘Share’ and ‘Debit account’ options are available.
Priority Payment files submitted using the File Upload service:
We recommend that you review your payment files used for Intra–EEA Priority Payments and update the charge option, if needed. For the time being, if you submit a payment file with a charge option other than ‘Share’ our back office system will update the file to reference the ’Share' charge option.
General and Restricted Templates:
For newly created General and Restricted templates, the charge option is defaulted to ‘Share’ and/or ‘Debit account’ as appropriate. When creating payments from existing General Templates – the charge option will be updated automatically to ‘Share’ and/or ‘Debit account’ as appropriate.

When creating payments from existing Restricted Templates – the charge option will not be changed and our back office system will automatically update the payment to reference the ‘Share’ charge option.
Standing Instructions:
We recommend that you review any Standing Instructions and update the charge option, if needed. For the time being, Standing Instructions with a charge option other than ‘Share’ (or ‘Share’/‘Debit account’ for German debit accounts) will be updated by our back office system to include the correct ‘Share’ charge option.
Future-dated payments:
You need to review any future-dated payments with a value date after 6 January and make sure the charge option is either 'Share’ or ‘Share’/'Debit account' for German debit accounts. Any future-dated payments that don’t include the correct charge option will be sent for repair in HSBCnet. You will need to update the charge option before you can successfully process the payment.

Find out more

Would you like to learn more about PSD2? Review our informative brochure, available here>

If you have questions about the changes to HSBCnet payment screens, please contact your local HSBCnet Support Centre.