Do payment terminals need to be replaced? These will be the effects of the Accessibility Act

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The new requirements result from the so-called Accessibility Act. It only awaits the president’s signature. The Act implements the provisions of the Accessibility Directive, which we were supposed to implement almost two years ago (until June 28, 2022), and also significantly expands it. As we have already reported in Business Insider, according to the act, private companies will have to adapt their products and services, including websites, sales platforms, payment terminals and applications, to over five million people with special needs. In this article, we focus on the problems associated with adapting payment terminals to the above requirements.

The directive requires Member States to ensure that self-service terminals are adapted to be used by people “with special needs”, i.e. mainly people with disabilities. However, the Polish law extends this obligation to all terminals, including those operated by cashiers.

Fortunately, the act provides for a transitional period, so there will be plenty of time to adapt to the changes or possibly modify the regulations.

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What obligations are imposed by the directive and what by the law?

Directive 2019/882, i.e. the so-called European Accessibility Act (EAA) is intended to ensure greater accessibility of certain products and services to people with disabilities and people with functional limitations. Greater accessibility is to be provided at the level of all European Union countries. This also applies to ease of use of the so-called end devices, such as payment terminals.

As Joanna Seklecka, chairwoman of the Clearing Agents Committee and president of eService, explains, the authors of the directive emphasized from the very beginning that it concerns the use of self-service devices in which the end user (purchaser of goods or services) uses them independently, i.e. without involving the seller’s staff.

The draft Polish Act on Accessibility initially also assumed that only self-service terminals would have to be adapted to the needs of people “with special needs”. When the act was submitted to the Sejm (form no. 241), however, the regulations were clarified in such a way that the requirements for self-service devices were extended to all payment terminals, including those operated by cashiers. In this version, the provisions were passed by MPs and senators, and currently the act is waiting for the president’s signature.

As Paweł Zagaj, director of the Retail Banking Team of the Polish Bank Association, says: scope extension applying accessibility requirements to all payment terminals appeared at the parliamentary stage and had not been consulted before. — Meanwhile, other Member States (including Portugal, Germany, Sweden – ed.) have retained the exact wording of the directive in their national regulations – applying the accessibility requirements to self-service payment terminals – explains Paweł Zagaj.

What will be the transition period for terminals?

Let us emphasize that There will be plenty of time to adapt to the new regulations regarding payment terminals. This results from the transitional provisions (Article 84 and Article 85) included in the Act. According to them, until June 28, 2030, a service provider may offer or provide services using products that do not meet the accessibility requirements that they used to offer or provide services of the same type before the date of entry into force of the Act (which is to take place on June 28, 2025).

Importantly, the new requirements will only apply to new terminals introduced to the market. Therefore, there will be no need to replace old devices with new ones.

Pursuant to Art. 85 section 3 of the Act terminals that do not meet accessibility requirements, used by service providers to offer or provide services before the date of entry into force of the Act (before June 28, 2025), will be able to be used until the expiry of their economic useful life, but no longer than for a period of 20 years from the date of commencement of their use.

What will be the effects of extending the requirements to all payment terminals?

— We assume that the intentions behind this expansion of requirements were good. Unfortunately, the effect may cause a lot of unnecessary difficulties, both for the people it was intended to serve and for all other users of payment services – both consumers and entrepreneurs – comments Joanna Seklecka.

First of all, the act on terminals it will not bring real ease of use by people with special needsand they are the ones who will ultimately benefit from the facilities provided by the directive and the Act on Accessibility.

— Applying requirements to terminals that are not used by people with special needs or, like all customers, are assisted by e.g. a salesperson or restaurant staff, is disproportionate and excessive – he admits Paweł Zagaj. He emphasizes that banks want to introduce obligations that would actually contribute to increasing accessibility for people with special needs.

The adopted act means that the problem of ensuring accessibility will fall mainly on entrepreneurs, including shops.

— The act also does not take into account technological changes that have occurred over the last 5 years, i.e. from the time the directive was developed to its implementation, says Joanna Seklecka. As an example, he points to the requirement to the payment terminal provided the ability to connect wired headphones. In other words, the terminals will need to be equipped with separate headphone jacks.

— While a few years ago, even though there was no single selected headphone jack standard, it could at least be assumed that these were headphones with a “minijack” plug, today wired headphones are increasingly using USB-C ports – points out Joanna Seklecka.

This is a problem both for those using the terminals and for entrepreneurs who need to install them in stores. — A person with visual impairmentusing a self-service cash register to which a payment terminal is connected, will have to switch her wired headset between the cash register – when making a purchase and the payment terminal – to make payments and back to the cash register – to finalize the transaction, says Joanna Seklecka.

Terminals operated by cashiers will also have to have a headphone plug, even though this seems unnecessary.

What are the demands of banks and settlement agents?

Paweł Zagaj explains that the Polish Bank Association proposed that the Accessibility Act should retain the legal solutions provided directly in the EAA Directive. – We wanted the guidelines facilitating the classification of terminals to be developed only at the implementation stage, in dialogue with supervisory authorities and organizations representing people with special needs – adds the director of the ZBP.

Settlement agents are also counting on further dialogue. — I very much count on the continuation of the dialogue with the government and the institutions that will be responsible for supervising the implementation of the provisions of the Act and quick development of clear guidelines. I believe that this will help us avoid the situation that has become the experience of ATM network operators, says Joanna Seklecka.

He reminds that a few years ago, ATM operators were also obliged to implement solutions that were to facilitate the use of the devices. However, the changes were not consulted with the actual recipients and users. — Practice has shown that despite the expenditure and considerable effort, many functionalities are still not used by users. It turned out that the solutions included in the regulations imposed technologies that differed from those that the people for whom the regulations were created wanted to use, explains Joanna Seklecka.

Entrepreneurs, settlement agents and banks are currently counting on dialogue, development of good solutions and clarification of statutory concepts that can be interpreted differentlye.g. “people with special needs”.

Legislative stage: Act of April 26, 2024 on ensuring that the accessibility requirements of certain products and services are met by business entities – awaiting the president’s signature