Electronic payments: Consumer policies and practices in EU and U.S. law

In their daily lives, consumers make countless transactions, from small value purchases like groceries, train tickets, or apps, to larger ones concerning electronic devices or cars. Increasingly, those transactions are completed with the use of electronic payment services: electronic bank transfers, card payments using credit, debit or prepaid cards, or payments with the use of mobile devices. The proliferation of electronic payment services gives consumers more choice, but also brings different risks than the risks related to transactions using more traditional payment methods. Multiple questions arise in light of these developments. What are the legal frameworks regarding electronic payment services? What are the policies underlying those frameworks? How do those policies and legal frameworks translate into specific outcomes for the users of electronic payment services? This book seeks to provide answers to those questions. The research covers private law aspects of (i) retail, (ii) consumer, and (iii) electronic payment services. The comparative method is the primary method deployed by the research. The method is implemented both at the macro- and the micro-level, i.e. it serves the purpose of studying differences and similarities between the policies and legal systems of the EU and the U.S. in general (macro-level), and differences and similarities of the applicable rules and the outcomes of the consumer payment cases within those systems (micro-level). The functional method – with the use of the case studies – was chosen to locate the rules in each of the compared systems that are intended to solve the same legal issue and to compare the outcomes of the cases