PSD2 stands for Payment Service Directive 2. This is the current European directive that covers a wide range of regulations relating to payment services.

One of the PSD2 regulations that will have the greatest impact on e-commerce is the SCA (Strong Customer Authentication), which requires all European online shopping transactions to be authenticated, or in other words, to be processed as "3D Secure reinforced".

To improve the security of online shopping. However, it will also bring other effects, such as increased payment friction, a loss in conversion, and certain changes in the operation of all online payment environments.

PSD2/SCA applies to online payments where both the payer and the "collector" (merchant) are within the European Economic Area (EEA).

In most member countries, including Spain, Italy and Portugal, the implementation date will be January 1, 2021. However, we know that in France and Germany it will be on March 14 and 15 respectively, and in the UK on September 14, 2021.

The SCA will mainly affect the way in which buyers (payers) will be authenticated as it requires all European eCommerce transactions to be authenticated with 2 of these 3 authentication factors:

Let's take the example that we are going to buy a train ticket, once we have selected the day of travel, the seat and the payment method "card", in order to buy it we will have to enter the enumeration of our card, the expiry date and the CVC. In addition, our bank will redirect us to a second screen where we will be asked to insert a code that has just been sent to us by SMS in order to complete the payment. In this case the two authentication factors have been:

As we can see, this regulation obliges the payment industry to develop, implement and support a new version of 3D Secure, the "3D Secure 2", which complies with the SCA by ensuring this "strong authentication".

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