12. Stresses the importance of clear rules on consumer protection policies at European level; believes that further standardisation at European level is needed, in the form of a regulatory framework establishing security standards and transparency of costs for each form of electronic payment (also extending to non-banking service providers) and regulating all the actors involved in the provision of payment services as well as all intermediaries, including merchants (e.g. storage of credentials); believes that when defining standards it is necessary to take account of those systems which have brought about significant shifts towards saf ...[+++]er payments (e.g. the CHIPPIN system for cards; two-factor authentication systems; e-signatures and online payments passing through e-payment services), of those systems which are more vulnerable to fraud (e.g. where consumers’ sensitive personal data are transmitted to third parties, as in online payments through overlay services, or the magnetic strip system for cards), and of innovations that could make the processes safer;

Despite the evolution of data recording technologies, from punch cards and magnetic tapes to cloud computing on huge servers, the ability to access and understand information in the future in a landscape of evolving technologies remains crucial to scientific progress.

For those un-banked benefit recipients who do not even want a basic bank account available through post offices and prefer to have recourse to the old system of cash payments at the post offices, a new simplified Post Office Card account (POCA) will be offered with the only apparent difference that a magnetic stripe card will replace the previous paper-based passbooks and giro-cheques.

(b) The term "document" means any letter, note, minute, report, memorandum, signal/message, sketch, photograph, slide, film, map, chart, plan, notebook, stencil, carbon, typewriter or printer ribbon, tape, cassette, computer disk, CD-ROM, or other physical medium on which information has been recorded.