In December 2009, the payment card industry implemented initiatives, which introduces consistency to facilitate account switching for card scheme accounts. The initiatives consist of industry customer relations protocols, consumer education and templates, provision of merchant information and best practice standards on dealing with regular payment arrangements for card scheme accounts.
The term “scheme card“ includes any Visa or MasterCard credit cards or debit cards issued by a financial institution and scheme charge cards issued by American Express or Diners Club International.
Regular payments can be either a recurring payment or an instalment payment. A Regular Payment represents an agreement between you (the cardholder) and a merchant in which you pre-authorise the merchant to bill your card account at predetermined intervals (e.g. monthly or quarterly) or at intervals as agreed by you. The amount may differ or be the same for each transaction.
For example: You may ask your local gymnasium to charge your monthly gym membership fee to your credit card each month.
Or,
You may have purchased a new television from your local appliance store and are being billed by the merchant in subsequent multiple periods.
There are many benefits for cardholders who set up regular payments including:
Regular Payment Arrangements are an agreement between you (the cardholder) and the merchant. You should keep a record of all Regular Payment Arrangements you have established with merchants and store in a safe place. A template for recording your Regular Payment Arrangements is available from the Australian Payments Clearing Association website, www.apca.com.au.
You are responsible for notifying the merchant when your account details change, including a change in card number and/or change of card expiry date. Contact your merchant by phone, mail or internet and follow their instructions or click here to generate a Change in Account Details letter to your merchant. We recommend you keep a copy or a record of any Change in Account Details letter sent to your merchant and your earlier Regular Payment Arrangements. This correspondence will be required if your merchant.
You must contact your merchant and request they cancel your Regular Payment Arrangement. Be aware that you may be required to provide alternative payment details for the goods and/or services being provided.
If after a reasonable time, your merchant fails to cancel your Regular Payment Arrangement you may contact your financial institution for assistance.
Note that closing your scheme card account does not automatically cancel your Regular Payment Arrangements on that scheme card account. You must contact the merchant to either cancel the Regular Payment Arrangement or provide replacement cards details for future payments.
If you have provided a merchant with your card number for a Regular Payment Arrangement and your card number and/or expiry date changes then you must contact the merchant to advise them of the new card details. Failure to advise the merchant of these changes could result in the cancel of goods and/or services (e.g. cancellation of your car insurance policy).
Any issues with your regular payments, including the failure of the merchant to act on a change in account details advice, should be taken up directly with your merchant first. Should further assistance be required to resolve an issue between yourself and a merchant, please contact us for more information.
