1. Payment card schemes and processing entities:

(a) shall be independent in terms of accounting, organisation and decision-making processes;

(b) shall not present prices for payment card scheme and processing activities in a bundled manner and shall not cross-subsidise such activities;

(c) shall not discriminate in any way between their subsidiaries or shareholders on the one hand and users of payment card schemes and other contractual partners on the other hand and shall not in particular make the provision of any service they offer conditional in any way on the acceptance by their contractual partner of any other service they offer.

2. The competent authority of the Member State where the registered office of the scheme is located may require a payment card scheme to provide an independent report confirming its compliance with paragraph 1.

3. Payment card schemes shall allow for the possibility that authorisation and clearing messages of single card-based payment transactions be separated and processed by different processing entities.

4. Any territorial discrimination in processing rules operated by payment card schemes shall be prohibited.