The payment industry was faced with the problem of mass customer requests for refunds for airline tickets and travel packages, said Victor Dostov, chairman of the Electronic Money Association. According to the rules of payment systems, if the paid service was not provided to the cardholder, he has the right to demand compensation from the bank that issued the card for the money spent, he explains.
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The procedure is as follows: the cardholder contacts the issuing bank, and the cardholder may demand from the bank that services the service provider (acquirer) a refund (the so-called chargeback), Dostov describes. As a rule, if a service has not been provided, and its provider has not returned the money on its own, issuers initiate chargeback operations. Acquiring banks make compensation out of their own funds and can subsequently deduct this money from the account of the service provider, such as a tour operator or airline, he says. And he adds that in the current situation, the aviation industry and the tourism industry are experiencing great difficulties, so it is not a fact that banks will be able to return the funds paid.
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Most of all, this can hit banks that work with tour operators and airlines and act as aggregators for receiving payments, as well as services for booking tours and tickets, since banks will primarily collect funds from them, Dostov emphasizes. According to him, claims by cardholders can reach 1 billion rubles. “Our association is actively discussing the current situation with payment systems and market participants in search of a solution that minimizes overall losses,” he concluded.
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Vedomosti sent inquiries to the largest banks, payment systems, airlines and tour operators.
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Some customers require a refund for tickets for future dates – for example, to China or Italy, since it is already clear that there will be no flights there in the near future, the Vedomosti interlocutor said in a bank from the top 10. This is a very delicate legal point, since it is not regulated anywhere what to do in such situations, he points out.
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Banks raised this issue before, the situation worsened during the Transaero bankruptcy in 2017. Then the banks asked the Central Bank to clarify whether they should obey the global rules of payment systems, which provide for a chargeback procedure. “In connection with the recent situation in Russia in a number of sectors of the economy, primarily in the air transportation and travel services market, a number of trade and service enterprises have lost their solvency and are not fulfilling obligations to customers,” the Bank Association said in a statement. Russia ”sent to the Central Bank in 2017 for an annual meeting with the leadership of the regulator. The settlement procedure in payment systems in practice boils down to the fact that when customers dispute transactions, the amounts of such transactions are debited without acceptance from the correspondent accounts of acquiring banks, the materials for the meeting said. After that, the acquiring bank is forced to independently recover the debt from the trade and service company, “which in most cases is futile and futile,” bankers complained. The whole situation “causes increased concern of the banking community.”
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The Central Bank replied to banks that, in accordance with the law “On the National Payment System”, work with customer complaints is governed by the rules of the payment system. He also emphasized that “in practice, the disputed procedures of the payment system provide for several cycles of settlement of the disputed transaction on the basis of the documents submitted and are not limited to writing off funds from the bank account of the acquiring bank.” Vedomosti sent a request to the Central Bank.
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