High Cost Credit Review: Final Rules And Guidance On Overdraft Pricing And Repeat Use

The FCA has published final rules and a further consultation on a range of measures transforming the overdraft market. The changes in the final rules cover pricing intervention and repeat overdraft use. A new version of the FCA's Payment Services and E-Money Approach Document - containing revised guidance on refused payment fees - has also been published.

The final pricing and repeat use rules are largely unchanged from the proposals consulted on in December 2018 (see our previous blog post). Firms have been given a bit longer to implement the pricing rules changes, which won't now come into force until 6 April 2020, and the repeat use and competition remedies (the latter having been finalised in December 2018) take effect on 18 December 2019. But the FCA's revised guidance on refused payment fees comes in straight away. This means that firms must immediately ensure that such fees reasonably correspond to the costs of refusing payments, so some may already find