Rafael Tridico Faria
Lawyer at Marcos Martins Advogados
Law 14.031/20, published on July 29, 2020, made changes to the rules of the payment arrangement system between shopkeepers, card operators and financial institutions.
The intention is to bring greater security to participants in the payment arrangement system, since it clarifies that the funds received during the transaction by the participants do not communicate with their other funds and therefore cannot be the subject of any judicial constriction that falls on the participant, and the funds received must be used solely for the settlement of payment transactions to the receiving end user. In other words, the funds received by the card companies and financial institutions that must go to the shopkeepers do not communicate with the assets of these entities and must be used solely to pay for the transactions carried out by the shopkeepers.
Another change was the prohibition on the possibility of the funds received by the participants being subject to the assignment of credit rights or guarantees, unless the proceeds of the assignment of credits or the guaranteed transaction are intended to fulfill settlement obligations between the participants in the payment arrangement regarding transactions carried out up until receipt by the receiving end user, or to ensure the fulfillment of these obligations, in accordance with the rules of the payment arrangement.
Finally, another important change is in relation to the way banks hedge against exchange rate volatility. The rules obliged banks to allocate a greater amount than necessary to hedging because a differentiation for taxation between the exchange rate variation of the investment and the exchange rate variation of the hedge reduced the net value of the exchange rate protection. The new law imposes taxation on both variations and so banks will not have to hedge more than necessary, reducing the cost of foreign currency operations for banks.
