ECB Opinion on a Regulation on electronic money and payment services

On 30 April the European Central Bank (ECB) issued its opinion on the proposed regulation and directive on payment and electronic money services, strongly supporting the proposal for a directive on payment and electronic money services. In particular, the ECB welcomes the enhanced use of strong customer authentication, the extension of the use of an IBAN to all credit transfers and the clarifications provided by the proposed regulation and directive on open banking rules. Finally, the ECB draws the attention of the EU legislator to the need to ensure a level playing field when considering the scope of licences to ensure that both FinTech and BigTech activities are covered. 

The ECB invites the EU legislator to consider, as a first step, how best to ensure that competent authorities are adequately informed about all direct and indirect (e.g. agent, broker) financial activities of large and complex non-bank groups and that the relevant information is properly shared between competent authorities. The ECB invites the EU legislator to consider, secondly, extending in the proposed directive (i) the range and use of supervisory tools, including the possibility to impose prudential consolidation requirements on groups of payment institutions and to wind up payment institutions; and (ii) the prudential regime applicable to such payment institutions.

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