Banxico makes the new SPEI rules more flexible; listened to proposals from sectors such as fintech

A few days after the new rules of the Interbank Electronic Payment System (SPEI), which seek to regulate the indirect participation of financial entities in this scheme, the Bank of Mexico (Banxico) decided to make the provisions more flexible, after several meetings with different sectors, especially with financial technology (fintech).

Within its website, in the section on regulations regarding SPEI, the central bank has published circulars 16/2022 and 15/2022, which modify the rules published last March regarding the regulation of indirect participation of said system.

According to the documents, which must be published in the Official Gazette of the Federation, the most relevant changes are in the direction of three aspects:

1. The entry into force of the circular, originally scheduled for next December 15, but which extends until June 19, 2023.
2. Increased limits to force direct participants to connect directly.
3. Mechanisms are created for the change of CLABES until they are direct participants.

The problem

These changes come after different meetings with various sectors that were under pressure to comply with the rules that were issued last March in the Official Gazette of the Federation, through the modification to circular 14/2017 and the publication of 1/2022. .

The SPEI is the payment infrastructure of Banco de México that allows its participants (financial entities) to send and receive payments among themselves to provide their end customers with the electronic transfer service in real time.

Currently, there are just over 80 participants directly connected to SPEI; however, some of these in turn offer the service to other entities, which act as indirect participants, so that they can offer the service to their end customers.

“By regulating the indirect participation of financial entities in the SPEI, standardized and accessible criteria are established for the provision of such services by the participants, so that the clients of said financial entities have the same protection measures and levels of service than the clients of the SPEI participants”, can be read in the modifications to circular 14/2017.

According to analysis of the fintech industry, if the entities are indirect participants, they pay for the provision of connectivity to the SPEI to a direct one, which helps certain entities to avoid incurring direct costs involved in connecting directly to the system.

However, the original rules provided for limits, with minimum thresholds, which practically forced all indirect participants to become direct, with the costs that this entails by requiring compliance with a total of 292 requirements in different areas, in addition to hiring specialized personnel. in the SPEI and have the technological infrastructure dedicated to the application.

In this context, after different meetings, Banxico made changes where the limits are extended so that once exceeded, the indirect participants begin their process to connect in one of the three scenarios indicated in the circular:

For the fintech industry, the rules published last March represented a difficult regulatory burden for some entities to comply with, especially Electronic Payment Fund Institutions.