European Banking Authority Guidelines with respect to PISPs, AISPs and ASPSPs

According to the revised Payment Services Directive (the ‘PSD II’), payment initiation service providers (‘PISPs’) and account information service providers (‘AISPs’) do not hold client funds when exclusively providing these services and therefore it would be disproportionate to impose the ‘own funds’ requirements on these new market participants. Nonetheless, these are still expected to be able to meet their liabilities in relation to their activities and should therefore be required to hold either Professional Indemnity Insurance (‘PII’) or a comparable guarantee.

The European Banking Authority (‘EBA’) is working on developing EBA Guidelines on the criteria to be used by Member States to establish the minimum monetary value of PII or comparable guarantee to be held by:

• PISPs to ensure that they can cover liabilities;
• AISPs against their liability with respect to the account servicing payment service provider (ASPSP) or the payment user resulting from non-authorised or fraudulent access to or non-authorised or fraudulent use of payment account information.

The EBA’s proposal on these criteria will be published in the form of a consultation paper in summer 2016 and will be publicly consulted for three months. The final criteria will have to be used by national authorities to determine the minimum monetary amount of the PII or comparable guarantee, which will be applicable in national jurisdictions as of January 2018.

ASPSPs, PISPs and AISPs are urged to fill in the respective questionnaires which will assist the EBA in developing appropriate criteria to be covered by the Guidelines.

The above-mentioned questionnaires, may be accessed here.

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