credit

The European Commission (EC) urged Spain to “enact EU rules on mortgage credit” and to “fully transpose EU-wide rules on mortgages”. “If these Member States fail to act within two months, they may be referred to the Court of Justice of the EU”, the EU executive said this Thursday. The warning was extended to eight more countries Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden. Member States had to implement these rules in their national law by the 21st of March 2016, but having missed the original deadline, the EC warned them through letters of formal notice last May. The Mortgage Credit Directive (Directive 2014/17/EU), which was adopted on 4 February 2014, aims to “improve consumer protection measures across the EU by introducing EU-wide responsible lending practices”.

The Catalan banking group Banc Sabadell earned €708.4 million in 2015, according to figures published by the company. This result is 90.6% higher than that obtained in 2014. The good result of Banc Sabadell in 2015 is mainly due to the integration of the UK bank TSB in June, which added accounts worth €122 million. Without this operation, Banc Sabadell’s net profits would only had grown by 57.8%. Thus, net interest income, which measures the bank’s ordinary activity of receiving deposits and authorising credit, was €3.203 billion, 41.7% higher than in 2014. The internationalisation of Banc Sabadell has already been consolidated and 32% of the credits were authorised abroad. In 2014, this percentage was 6%. The default rate, which has dropped to 7.79%, 5 points less than in 2014, also contributed to Banc Sabadell’s positive result.

The North-American company will launch later this year the ‘PayPass Wallet’, a global technology platform that unifies physical and digital payment systems. Master Card has just opened an office in Barcelona in order to take advantage of the synergies in a “pulse for future technological development” according to the president of MasterCard Europe, as Barcelona, was proclaimed World Capital of Mobile Telephony. MasterCard Europe has only one office per country, so Catalonia will be the first exception: with the opening of the new office in Barcelona, the company has two locations in Spain.

CaixaBank and Visa Europe will begin installing the system enabling “contactless payments” to be made throughout Barcelona. The system consists of paying for goods valued at less than €20 by passing a special credit card in front of a sensor, with no need of actually introducing the card anywhere or typing any code. The system will become fully operational to coincide with the Mobile World Congress, which starts on February 27th. Barcelona will be the first city in Europe where the contactless payment method can be used, ahead of London, which aims to have it ready for the Olympics this summer.