The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has issued an update to the E-Payments User Protection Guidelines (the Guidelines). The new Guidelines will take effect from 30 June 2019.
The Guidelines set out MAS’s expectations for financial institutions (FIs) that issue accounts to individuals and sole proprietors that can be used for payment transactions. The Guidelines also set out duties of the users of those accounts (account holders). The objective of the Guidelines is to establish a baseline of protection that FIs will provide to account holders in respect of unauthorised or erroneous transactions.
The Guidelines require FIs to send notifications of transactions in accounts to the respective account holders so that the account holders can identify and report transactions that may be unauthorised or erroneous. The original Guidelines did not address the circumstance where an account holder chooses to receive fewer transaction notifications.
The key updates to the Guidelines are highlighted below:
As a default, the Guidelines require an FI to provide transaction notifications to each account holder for all outgoing transactions regardless of amount. However, an FI may choose to comply with an account holder’s transaction notification preferences and instructions instead.
For example, the FI may comply with a standing instruction to provide outgoing transaction notifications only for amounts higher than $50, or only for certain types of transactions. Regardless of such standing instructions, the updated Guidelines clarify that FIs are still expected to highlight the liability framework and respective duties under the Guidelines, and explain how the account holder will be affected by such notification preferences.
The updated Guidelines are available on the MAS website at the following link.
