Consultation on our merchant survey questionnaire
The PSR is conducting a market review into the supply of card-acquiring services. The final Terms of Reference (ToR) were published on 24 January 2019. The ToR state that we will undertake a survey of small and medium-sized merchants in the UK.
On 22 May 2019, we published a working paper on our proposed approach to the merchant survey. In this working paper, we stated that we would publish and consult in June or July 2019 on a draft of the questionnaire that will be used to survey merchants.
What this document contains
This document contains the draft questionnaire that we propose to use. We instructed IFF, a market research agency, to prepare the draft questionnaire. IFF was appointed through a competitive tender process to help us carry out the merchant survey.
What happens now?
We welcome views on this draft questionnaire. If you would like to provide comments please send these to us by 5pm on 12 July 2019.
You can email your comments to cards@psr.org.uk or write to us at:
Card-acquiring market review team
Payment Systems Regulator
12 Endeavour Square
London E20 1JN
We will consider your comments when finalising the questionnaire for the merchant survey.
Disclosure of information
Generally, we will seek to publish views or submissions in full or in part. This reflects our duty to have regard to our regulatory principles, which include those in relation to:
- publication in appropriate cases
- exercising our functions as transparently as possible
We will not accept blanket claims of confidentiality. If you wish to claim confidentiality over specific items in your submission, you must identify those specific items which you claim to be confidential, and explain the basis on which confidentiality is sought. If you include extensive tracts of confidential information in your submissions, we will ask you to submit non-confidential versions.
We may nonetheless be required to disclose information marked as confidential in order to meet legal obligations.
This would be the case, for example, if we are asked to disclose confidential information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. We will endeavour to consult you if we receive such a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Any decision we make not to disclose information can be reviewed by the Information Commissioner and the Information Rights Tribunal.
In accordance with the legal framework in the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013 (FSBRA), we will not disclose confidential information that relates to the business or affairs of any person, that we receive for the purposes of our functions under FSBRA, unless:
- we have the consent of the person who provided the information and, if different, the person to whom it relates, or
- there is a ‘gateway’ permitting such disclosure. One of the gateways is the ‘self-help’ gateway whereby the PSR will be able to disclose confidential information to third parties to enable or help the PSR to perform its public functions. Where we disclose confidential information to a third party, we may impose restrictions on the further disclosure or use of the information by such parties.
You should note that information that is already lawfully publicly available or in such a form that it is not possible to ascertain from it information relating to a particular person (for example, if it is summarised, anonymised or aggregated) is not confidential information for the purposes of FSBRA.
We take our data protection responsibilities seriously and will process any personal data that you provide to us in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation and our PSR Data Privacy Policy. For more information on how and why we process your personal data, and your rights in respect of the personal data that you provide to us, please see our privacy policy on our website, available here: https://www.psr.org.uk/privacy-notice.
