Legislative Decree no. 507 of 30 December 1999, receiving Law no. 205 of the 25th June 1999 responds to the need to enhance protection for the circulation of cheques; its effectiveness is based on the fact that financial operators have access to information on people who have used cheques in an illicit manner and that prohibitive measures are applied to those responsible for such behaviour.
In the aim to enforce the new regulations, the Bank of Italy has implemented a digital archive of bank and postal cheques and payment cards (called Centrale di Allarme Interbancaria, CAI); it is a service of general interest of which purpose is to ensure secured operations for the payment systems.
The Bank of Italy, as responsible for the data processing, has decided to make use of an external part for the technical management of this archive. (from (https://www.bancaditalia.it/compiti/sispaga-mercati/cai/index.html?com.dotmarketing.htmlpage.language=1).
SEFIN’s CAI system is a web application system that allows the financial operators to be compliant with the reporting obligations. The system can guarantee the accuracy and completeness of the data submitted to the Register. SEFIN is also an access point to the Interbank National network necessary to manage the requested communication concerning the reporting process.
The main features of the system are:
- checks and data balancing;
- manual amendments before the submission;
- customer analysis and scoring;
- risks status;
- prompt deletion and amendments according to regulation (see article 3 of the Ministry of justice decree n. 458/2001)
The reporting intermediaries are:
- Banks;
- Financial intermediaries that issue payment cards;
- Postal offices;
- Prefects (through the Interior Ministry);
- Justice Ministry.