What are the criteria for a customer being classed as a micro-enterprise?
A micro-enterprise is an enterprise that employs fewer than ten people and whose annual turnover and/or annual balance sheet total does not exceed €2m. The definition allows for group companies’ turnover, etc, to be taken into account in this calculation. Full details of the definition can be found in the Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC. For the purposes of the corporate opt-out (see above), whether or not a customer is a micro-enterprise is determined at the time of entry into the payment services contract. Where difficulties have arisen with determining the status of existing customer, to remove doubt about a customer’s status payment service providers may have chosen to enter into a new contract for payment services with the customer in order to reset the date at which the micro-enterprise tests are assessed. The jurisdiction of the Financial Ombudsman (FOS) is wider, covering complaints from customers that were micro-enterprises at the time of contracting or which have since
