Volume: 11 Issue: 10
(October 2017)

News

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (‘FCA’) published its Policy Statement ‘Implementation of the revised PSD2: Approach Document and final Handbook changes’ (‘FCA Policy Statement’) on 19 September 2017, following earlier FCA consultations on the implementation of PSD2 and draft authorisation and reporting forms (CP17/11 and CP17/22, released in April and July 2017 respectively). Separately on the same day, the UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (‘PSR’) confirmed its approach to monitoring and enforcing PSD2, publishing guidance (‘PSR Monitoring Guidance’) on how it will monitor compliance with Regulation 61 and Part 8 of the Payment Services Regulations 2017 (‘Regulations’), those parts of the Regulations for which the PSR is the sole competent authority; this Guidance also follows a consultation, which was released in April 2017. / read more

The European Central Bank (‘ECB’) published its draft guide to assessments of FinTech credit institution licence applications for public consultation on 21 September 2017, which aims to help FinTechs that are considering applying for a banking licence understand what is required of them, whilst also making the application process more transparent. The ECB’s draft guide identifies risks specific to the FinTech bank business model and states that the two most common and significant IT risks are the increased vulnerability to cyber attacks and the increased reliance on outsourcing. / read more

Features

David G.W. Birch, Member of the Payments & FinTech Lawyer Editorial Board, shares his thoughts on a recent, headline-grabbing trend in the FinTech space: that of initial coin offerings (‘ICOs’), which have raised millions in funding so far. David looks at the trend in the context of the future of investment, before going on to discuss the movement of ICOs from their current state to a more regulated era, and the importance of ICOs to the future of money. / read more

From 13 January 2018 onwards, all payment service providers (‘PSPs’) operating within the European Union will be required to provide their competent authorities with statistical data on fraud relating to different means of payment. The competent authority of each Member State will then be required to provide this information to the European Banking Authority (‘EBA’) and the European Central Bank (‘ECB’). Fiona Simpson and Siân Akerman of Kingsley Napley LLP provide details on the draft Guidelines issued by the EBA that are currently open for consultation and the potential impact of the new requirements on payment services businesses. / read more

FinTechs must juggle the significant requirements of the revised Payment Services Directive (‘PSD2’), but unlike other parts of industry, they may have an advantage in that they have an existing focus on tech, and therefore are uniquely positioned to take advantage of some of the changes PSD2 brings, for example in terms of the new regulated products, namely account information services (‘AIS’) and payment initiation services (‘PIS’). Danielle Herndon, Head of Compliance at Paybase, a London-based FinTech, describes how FinTechs can leverage PSD2 and get ahead. / read more

Through various public and private initiatives an ecosystem for FinTech businesses has over the past few years been established in Austria. Dr Roman Hager, Partner at WMWP Rechtsanwälte GmbH, explains the relevant legal framework that applies to FinTechs operating in Austria and how the regulatory environment has been developed to create a startup and FinTech ecosystem. / read more

On 27 July 2017, the European Banking Authority (‘EBA’) adopted Final Guidelines on Major Incident Reporting, providing more granularity to the incident reporting obligations contained in Article 96 of the revised Payment Services Directive (‘PSD2’). In this article, Scott McInnes, Partner at Bird & Bird LLP, summarises the salient points of the Final Guidelines, and sheds light on its links with the General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’)¹ and the Network and Information Security Directive (‘NIS Directive’)². / read more

About Payments & FinTech Lawyer

The monthly publication covering legal, regulatory and policy developments relating to the fast-moving payments and FinTech sectors. Key topics include mobile payments, e-money, prepaid and other payment cards, online banking, digital currencies such as Bitcoin, card fraud and other cyber crime, RegTech, robo-advice, P2P lending, and crowdfunding, as well as regulatory regimes such as the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), the Payment Accounts Directive, and the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive / read more