On 15 September 2020 we published our interim report into the supply of card-acquiring services and launched our 12-week consultation period. 

Today, we’re setting out our plans to disclose material underlying our merchant survey commissioned as part of our market review from IFF Research. Following a request by a party, we’ve decided to disclose the merchant survey data to certain interested parties through a confidentiality ring to help parties respond to our consultation. 

Access to the confidentiality ring will be granted to a limited number of approved external economic and/or legal advisers of certain parties with an interest in the consultation. These external advisers and their employer firms will be required to sign individual and firm-level undertakings before they will be granted access to the confidentiality ring. The undertakings can be found in the notice on this page.

We invite interested parties to submit expressions of interest for their external legal and/or economic advisers to access the confidentiality ring. We also invite parties expressing an interest to submit any comments they may have on the PSR’s proposed approach to disclosing the material.

The notice on this page provides full details of our disclosure exercise. 

The notice also provides information on our plans to extend the consultation on the interim report to allow access to the confidentiality ring.

How to apply

Please email cards@psr.org.uk  with the subject heading including both the words “Merchant Survey disclosure – expression of interest” as well as the name of your organisation by 5pm on 4 December.

In your email, you will have to provide:

  • an explanation of the interest you have in the consultation (i.e. why you think the interim report and the consultation affect you)
  • the reasons why you are requesting access to the confidentiality ring;
  • and details of your external legal and/or economic advisers (i.e. name, job title and employer) seeking access to the confidentiality ring.

Interested parties should include any comments they may have on our proposed approach to disclosing the material. Comments should be supported with an appropriate explanation so that we are in a position properly to consider the merits of the comments received.

What exactly is being disclosed?

We are disclosing anonymised raw data containing the responses of 1,037 small and medium sized merchants to questions in the merchant questionnaire. The data is stored in .xlsx format.

How long do parties have to apply?

Any expressions of interest together with any comments interested parties have on our proposed approach to disclosing the material must be submitted to us at cards@psr.org.uk by 5pm on 4 December. 

We will consider these before deciding whether to grant access to the confidentiality ring.

How will access be given to the material?

Advisers to interested parties will be able to download the material from a secure system (the HighQ system).

How long will access last? 

Advisers will be granted access to the material for three weeks. 

Will you be extending the consultation period?

The deadline for stakeholders to submit responses to our consultation on the interim report is currently 5pm on 8 December 2020. To run the confidentiality ring, we plan to extend the existing consultation period accordingly. The new deadline for submitting responses to the consultation on the interim report will be contingent upon the duration of the confidentiality ring and the date on which it opens. 

We will make a further announcement in due course to confirm the duration of the confidentiality ring and the end of the extended consultation period.

Are there plans to disclose anything else?

We currently do not plan to disclose any other material.

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