Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 18 October 2022
288. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Finance the recent assessment or analysis his Department has made in the trends and levels of incidence of push payment fraud; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51675/22]
View answerUnder the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010, as amended, anti-money laundering rules require all instances of fraud and/or suspicious transactions to be reported by financial institutions to the Financial Intelligence Unit, which is part of An Garda Síochána and under the remit of the Department of Justice.
The reduction of payment fraud has been an important area of work of my Department in recent years. The revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) introduced strong security requirements for the initiation and processing of electronic payments, which apply to all payment service providers. This approach is intended to reduce the risk of fraud for all types of electronic payments (especially online payments) and to protect the confidentiality of the user’s financial data.
Under PSD2 payment service providers are obliged to apply strong customer authentication (SCA) when a payer initiates an electronic payment transaction. SCA requires the customer to go through two-factor authentication made up of elements from two of three separate categories: knowledge, possession, and inherence. SCA is a combination of something you know (a password or PIN), something you have (a card reader or token generator) and something you are (a fingerprint).
The European Commission are currently undertaking a review of PSD2, which is expected to cover a wide variety of areas related to the Directive. Officials from my Department have been engaging with the Commission’s review on areas of Irish interest, including strong customer authentication. It is likely that when the review is complete the Commission will bring forward a proposal for a new Directive (PSD3) early in the new year.
