PSP

Paragraph 5 of the guidelines indicates the payment services that can still be managed in departure from the compulsoriness of the pagoPA platform, and among these, letter d) refers exclusively to cash payments performed at the bank that performs the treasury and cash service for the creditor. Therefore, letter d) does not cover the payment transactions performed at the physical POS installed at the creditor, as they are not cash payments, nor the cash payments performed at PSPs that are not a treasurer or cashier bank for the creditor, as they are not payments performed at the bank that performs the treasury or cash service for the creditor. In fact, the management of the institution's cash is the exclusive responsibility of the treasurer or cashier bank, and makes exclusive reference to the payments made in cash at that bank.

No, paragraph 5 of the guidelines indicate the payment services that can still be managed outside of the pagoPA system, and these do not include the MAV, for which, starting from 28 February 2021, it will be prohibited (art. 65, paragraph 2, Leg. Decree 217/2017) for the PSP to accept payments for these payment notices outside the pagoPA system if the beneficiary is an entity required to register with pagoPA. See also FAQ C8.

Paragraph 9.1 of the guidelines “Payments made via postal current account payment slip” specifies the obligation of Poste Italiane s.p.a., if requested by the creditor, to execute the repayment to the treasury account of the amounts collected via the pagoPA platform on the single business day. This operation inserts only the transactions executed on pagoPA by the Poste with postal payment slips and not other transactions executed by other PSPs. In fact, this operation is instrumental in ensuring that the postal account, when used as a "support account," maintains the ability for the institution to perform reconciliation via the cash journal and individual pagoPA reconciliation/RT flows. Therefore, for a valid management of the pagoPA flows and to achieve automated reconciliation, Creditors are suggested to have a postal account in addition to the treasury account, and to always indicate in their RPT both the “credit current account” with the treasury IBAN and the “support current account” with the postal IBAN. In this way, the PSPs registered with pagoPA will credit only the treasury account, with the exception of Poste that will instead use only the postal account and, upon request of the institution, also automatically transfer the amounts in that account in favor of the treasury account with the frequency requested by the creditor, all of which is performed with every evident simplification of the process of reconciliation and regularization of the collections received.

The negotiated agreements existing between a Public Administration and one or more payment service providers that still concern an electronic collection method that is not compliant with the guidelines are valid until their natural expiration, provided that they were stipulated before the legal deadline of 28/02/2021, without prejudice to the possibility for the institution to withdraw from the contract prior to its expiration to use the pagoPA services.

The PSD and PSD2, that is the European directives on payment services in Europe (SEPA) and, equally, the respective national implementing regulations, prohibit citizens from being requested to pay a surcharge requested by the beneficiary for the performance of the payment, a so-called surcharge.

The pagoPA system is an ambitious, strategic and innovative project that makes relationships simple by focusing on transparency, competition and autonomy, both in the public sector as well as in the private sector, and aims to make the public sector more efficient, without forgoing its policies of cost containment.

With pagoPA, users are no longer required to execute the payment in compliance with the instructions provided by the individual creditor as they can chose how to make the payment from among numerous solutions freely offered, and in a competitive manner, by the PSP market. Therefore, with the purpose of overturning the previous logic of collection performed by the PA- which required an agreement between the PA and a PSP as its special creditor, with limitations for the user and costs for the PA, as well as for the payer - with the pagoPA system, all the registered PSPs can perform payments in favor of the creditors, leveraging their own contractual relations (on an occasional or non-occasional basis,) with the payer user, without the need for any type of agreement with the creditor. The PSP that performs the payment is therefore considered a provider, on an occasional or non-occasional basis, for the payer, and not also as a provider of the beneficiary creditor.

The pagoPA system does not in fact require any type of contractual relationship between the PSP and the creditor, therefore the commissions are applied to the citizen by their PSP (freely selected from among the registered PSP) for the payment service they requested. As a result, in application of the community rate principle, SHARE and the surcharge prohibition, the payer is required to pay commissions to the PSP they selected. These principles, due to the operation of pagoPA, are respected also for operations when paying with a card. Following what has already been explained, for reasons of completeness it should be specified that what takes place with pagoPA – that is permit a registered PSP that was freely selected by the user to request a commission for the payment transaction – represents a case that can in no way be compared to the practice prohibited by PSD and PSD2 and considered unjust (art. 21, comma 4bis, and art. 62, paragraph 1, Leg. Decree 206/2005) of the application of a surcharge, in which a beneficiary applies a surcharge for certain types of payment, requiring the user to fully or partially cover the commissions that the beneficiary is required to pay to their PSP.

The purpose of storage is to protect the electronic documents and their data over time, ensuring their security and integrity and that they will not be modified in order to preserve the probatory value of the electronic document and in the specific case of pagoPA, of the payment transaction. From this point of view, when examining the nature and characteristics of each element that exists in the pagoPA system flows, the following is underlined:

Registration with pagoPA is not connected with the treasury or cashier service. During registration, the institution must configure the IBANs of the bank and/or postal accounts to be credited using the pagoPA functions. These current accounts can be credited regardless of whether or not the relative payment service provider is registered with pagoPA. If the treasury or cashier of the institution is registered with pagoPA, they can support the institution with registration, as they can be configured, if necessary, as the technological intermediary of the institution (see the guidelines). Remember that every institution is free to identify the methods for receiving goods and services, including those from technological intermediaries for registering with pagoPA, always in compliance with the regulations of reference, including the Procurement and Purchasing Code on the platform managed by CONSIP S.p.A.

The accumulation of volumes - with other PSPs of the same corporate group or with other PSPs with the same authorized representative - allows the individual PSPs to be able to have a lower average price per individual transaction based on the higher amount reached during the period of reference. The total of the transactions accumulated during the invoicing quarter will be distributed as follows:

As provided by art. 6, paragraph 2 of the standard contract, the single PSP can indicate a technological intermediary for each payment service they offer. The PSP provides all the necessary information in the information data catalog. Therefore, for the selection of an intermediary, the PSP must provide this information to PagoPA S.p.A. by sending a pec (certified email) to accordipsp@pec.pagopa.it.

The role of the Authorized Representative concerns the contractual component (in particular the calculation of the payment due to PagoPA S.p.A. and who will pay this amount to PagoPA S.p.A.), whereas the role of technological intermediary concerns the technical/infrastructural component for the operations on the pagoPA platform. The two components are independent and separate of each other, even if in order to take on the role of a representative, an entity must first be operational as a technological intermediary.

A registered PSP can freely change the selections they make over time, with the obligation of providing evidence to PagoPA S.p.A. who will implement them according to the schedule indicated in the standard contract for registering with platform.

The payment system using the pagoPA platform includes the participation of:

As these operations do not involve any collection activity by third parties or repayment from the third party to the beneficiary, no entity is configured as an accounting agent.

The guidelines, as secondary legislation, have the prerequisite of the primary provisions on payments, including Leg. Decree 11/2010. Furthermore, the agreement with which a Payment Service Provider registers with pagoPA does not have any impact on the execution times of the payment operations which, therefore, will be regulated by the primary regulation on payments of reference, including Leg. Decree 11/2010, without any possibility of derogation. Furthermore, it is specified that the paying entity is always a customer, even if on an occasional basis, of the PSP that performs the payment operation and that, therefore, this operation is regulated - as concerns the timing - by article 20, paragraph 1 of Leg. Decree 11/2010, which requires the payment operation to be executed on the following business day (T+1) with respect to the request made by the payer. Therefore, pagoPA has also standardized on a national level the time required for the institutions to receive in their current account the amounts paid, for any reason, by citizens and businesses in their favor, reducing this period uniformly to T+1.