Contingency Measures under Article 33

Article 31 of the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389 , states that account servicing payment service providers (ASPSPs) shall ‘establish the interface(s) referred to in Article 30 by means of a dedicated interface or by allowing the use by the payment service providers referred to in Article 30(1) of the interfaces used for authentication and communication with the account servicing payment service provider's payment services users.’ Article 33(4) of the Delegated Regulation requires ASPSPs to set up a contingency mechanism and specifies that “as part of a contingency mechanism, payment service providers referred to in Article 30(1) shall be allowed to make use of the interfaces made available to the payment service users for the authentication and communication with their account servicing payment service provider, until the dedicated interface is restored to the level of availability and performance provided for in Article 32.” Article 33(6) of the Delegated Regulation allows for ASPSPs to be exempted from the obligation to set-up the contingency mechanism if certain conditions are met. Provided that an ASPSP has not received such an exemption, they are required to set-up a contingency mechanism. As detailed in Article 33(4) of the Delegated Regulation, as part of the contingency mechanism third party providers shall be allowed to make use of the interface(s) made available to the payment service users for the authentication and communication with their ASPSPs. A secondary dedicated interface, available only to payment service providers, would not fulfill that requirement. Further, it should be noted that, in accordance with Article 33(5) of the Delegated Regulation, access to the interface made available to the payment service users for the authentication and communication with their ASPSPs, as part of the contingency mechanism, requires ASPSPs to ensure the payment service providers can be identified, avoiding the risk of unidentified access through the customer interface.