Mexico’s Senate has approved the Digital Economy Law for Digital and Electronic Payments, which recognizes the CURP Digital and a new Citizen Digital File (Expediente Digital Ciudadano) as trust mechanisms for contracting financial services online. The Senate passed the bill 72 to 34 and sent it to the federal Executive.
The CURP Digital is a digital form of the CURP, the unique population registry code assigned to people in Mexico. The law, which came to the Senate from the Chamber of Deputies, is aimed mainly at expanding digital payments for government procedures, goods and services.
When the Chamber of Deputies’ finance committee examined the initiative in September, José Antonio Peña Merino, head of the Agency for Digital Transformation and Telecommunications, said banks and other financial institutions would be required to accept the CURP Digital as a means of identification when a customer chooses to present it, while obtaining and using it would be voluntary. He said the Citizen Digital File would allow official digital documents to be used and recognized by financial institutions, always at the person’s request and with their authorization.
“The owners of the data are people, not the authorities or the financial institutions,” Peña Merino told the committee. The initiative was presented as a way to open bank accounts quickly and simply, while giving the Bank of Mexico powers to ensure that new accounts are not used for illicit funds.
On payments, the law lists QR codes, near-field communication devices, debit and credit cards, direct debit and transfers among the digital methods available to users, and requires all three levels of government and service providers to take the steps needed to accept them. The Finance Ministry will determine strategic sectors in which only digital payments are accepted, while cash or checks will be allowed during contingencies that disrupt payment systems. The Bank of Mexico may also issue rules standardizing financial services apps.
Senators from the PAN, PRI and Movimiento Ciudadano spoke against the bill. Francisco Daniel Barreda Pavón of Movimiento Ciudadano argued that people without a bank account, internet access or an app would be left out. Manuel Huerta Ladrón de Guevara, who chairs the Senate’s First Legislative Studies Committee, said the law does not require all transactions to be digital and that implementation will be gradual.
Sources: Senado de la República, Excélsior
–
By the ID Tech Editorial Team
