VATICAN CITY — A senior Vatican official says he is “truly surprised” that the Bank of Italy ordered credit card payments suspended in the tiny city-state and insists the Vatican has taken adequate measures to fight money laundering.
The Vatican has been cash only since Jan. 1 after Italy’s central bank compelled Deutsche Bank Italia to stop providing electronic payment services to the Holy See. That has meant visitors to the Vatican Museums - they numbered 5 million last year - and the Vatican post office have had to pay cash for tickets and any other transactions.
It’s an inconvenience that, if left unchanged for long, could eventually affect the Vatican’s bottom line.
The Bank of Italy said in a statement this week it had no choice but to order the block because the Vatican has no banking regulatory framework or European Union-recognized alternative for anti-money laundering purposes. The bank said it realized, during a routine search, that Deutsche Bank had never obtained authorization to install the so-called POS, or point-of-sales, machines in the Vatican and that “any other European supervisory authority would have behaved in the same way, in compliance with community law.”
Front Section, Pages 2 on 01/14/2013