Citing Covid-19, the European payments industry is calling on the EBA to push back the deadline for the migration to Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) standards still further. 

Last October, the EBA extended the deadline for the migration to SCA standards to 31 December 2020, giving national authorities another 15 months to implement the new rules.

But now, the European Payment Institutions Federation (EPIF) has written to the EBA arguing for the possibility of "at least an additional six months".

The EPIF, which counts Visa and Mastercard among its members, argues that the "exceptional circumstances" of the Coronavirus pandemic is "putting an additional strain on the limited resources for all parties involved in the payment chain", making it difficult to concentrate on migrating to the new rules.

In addition, as locked down consumers become more reliant on e-commerce, the letter says it is a bad time to risk disruption by moving to SCA, which requires European shoppers to authenticate online payments over EUR30 with two of the following: something they know (like a password), are (fingerprint/face ID), or have (phone).

"Making technology changes when in crisis mode, with technical teams working remotely, adds significant risk to any deployment which could lead to further disruption, confusion and a worse customer experience," writes the EPIF.