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The European Banking Authority (EBA) today published a follow-up to the 2023 Peer Review Report assessing progress in the authorisation of payment institutions and electronic money institutions under the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2). While notable improvements and increased convergence have been observed, significant differences persist in key areas such as governance, internal control mechanisms, and local substance. These divergent implementations continue to pose risks of regulatory arbitrage and an uneven playing field across Member States.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a No Action letter advising the EU Commission, EU Council and EU Parliament to ensure that, in the long term, EU law needs to avoid a dual authorisation under two pieces of EU law for the activity of transacting electronic money tokens (EMTs). While the existing Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) still applies, the letter advises national competent authorities (NCAs) to enforce authorisation of PSD2 for a specified subset only of crypto asset service providers (CASPs) that transact EMTs, to do so only after a transition period that ends on 2 March 2026, and then to deprioritise specified PSD2 provisions.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) today published its final draft Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) on reporting of data on charges for credit transfers and payments accounts, and shares of rejected transactions. The ITS deliver on the mandate in the Instant Payment Regulation (IPR) amending the SEPA Regulation, and aim at standardising reporting from banks, payment institutions and e-money institutions (i.e. Payment Service Providers - PSPs) to their National Competent Authorities. The reported data will help to ensure consumers benefit from access to instant credit transfers, and that the latter are no longer more expensive than regular credit transfers. Following its public consultation, the EBA has postponed the first harmonised reporting from PSPs by 12 months, from April 2025 to April 2026.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) and the European Central Bank (ECB) published today a joint Report on payment fraud data. The report assesses payment fraud reported by the industry across the European Economic Areas (EEA), which amounted to €4.3bn in 2022 and €2.0bn in the first half of 2023. The Report confirms the beneficial impact of strong customer authentication (SCA) on fraud levels.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) today launched a public consultation on its draft Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) for uniform reporting templates in relation to the level of charges for credit transfers and share of rejected transactions under SEPA Regulation. These templates aim to standardise reporting from Payment Service Providers (PSPs) to their National Competent Authorities (NCAs). With such standardisation, the European Commission will be able to monitor the effects of changes to Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Regulation on the fees paid by customers of PSPs for payment accounts, as well as instant and non-instant credit transfers. The consultation runs until 31 October 2024.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) today published a Report on the issuance of what is commonly referred to as ‘virtual IBANs’ (vIBANs). In the absence of a common definition, the Report observes that the industry issues vIBANs in different ways and for different purposes and national authorities diverge in interpreting and applying regulatory requirements. The Report also identifies resulting issues in terms of money laundering and terrorist financing, consumer and depositor protection, authorisation and passporting, and regulatory arbitrage, and provides recommendations on how to address them.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an Opinion, in which it assesses payment fraud data that has recently become available to the EBA, identifies new types and patterns of payment fraud, and develops proposals to mitigate them. This Opinion aims at further strengthening the forthcoming legislative framework under the Third Payment Services Directive (PSD3) and Payment Services Regulation (PSR), as it will enshrine anti-fraud requirements for several years to come and needs to be as future-proof as possible.