Mandatory registration of pay-as-you-go cards in Poland – new legal regulations

Pursuant to new legal regulations in Poland, from 25 July card registration is a necessary requirement for its purchase, while users of active cards have time to register them until 1 February 2017.

The obligation to register cards is linked to the provisions of the so-called antiterrorist act passed through the parliament in June. The new law introduces a series of modifications into the existing regulations, including telecommunications law. Into this act that a new provision was added that make pay-as-you-go phone users lose their anonymity.

The new legal regulations impose on users some new obligations connected with a necessity to register the phone numbers one is in possession of. Currently, one is required to provide a name, surname, and PESEL number, and if a customer does not have it, they are required to provide a name and number of some other document confirming their identity.

Foreigners from outside the European Union wanting to use pay-as-you-go cards, in accordance with current legal status are in turn obliged to provide the number of their passport or their residence card. A company wanting to use prepaid phones will need, apart from company name, one of the following numbers: REGON, NIP, KRS, or Register of Business Activity number. It is still possible to purchase any number of cards – the law does not impose any limits in regard to this.

Of course, as the Office of Electronic Communications experts remind on their website, the crucial registration obligation concerns every SIM card. The Office’s experts also note that if you want to move an unregistered number to a new mobile network, first you need to register it with your old operator. Only then can you file a motion for a switch.

What is important, before activating a card, the operator will have to confirm the identity of the customer wanting to use their services. The cards bought on the day the new law entered into force will be inactive until they are registered. The ones that were active before the new provisions entered into force need to be registered by 1 February of the following year. If the obligation is not met – after the deadline (1 February 2017) the cards will be deactivated.

The mobile operators uniformly declare that what matters to them is not having users lose possibility to use their services out of a sudden, that is why their actions concentrated on maximum lengthening of the registration period with regard to the cards that are already in use. Offering the longest possible time to carry out the changes is, in view of the registration requirement, the only way to implement the change in the way that is the least bothersome for the clients.

The introduced amendments to the Polish law are also a substantial challenge for mobile operators – as much as ten-odd million active cards will need to be registered.

According to the representatives of the Ministry of the Interior, where the project of the regulations was created, the mandatory card registration will undoubtedly hit criminals and people engaged in terrorist activity that until now used pre-paid cards completely anonymously. The representatives of the ministry argue that the adoption of the new legal solutions will also contribute to counteracting the negative phenomenon of e.g. false bomb alarm calls that aim to put emergency services on full alert and in effect are disturbing functioning of the state institutions.

Obviously – critics of the new legal regulations concerning mandatory pay-as-you-go card registration abound. Part of the society sees the introduced solutions as controversial. They cite the observations of the EU Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmström, who directly admitted there are no proofs showing increased effectiveness of the law enforcement authorities in combatting crime where the registration of pre-paid cards is mandatory. Such provisions have already been implemented in Germany, France, Span or Italy, among others.