EBA E-mail alert January 17, 2025

Please provide your opinion on whether the payment service – acquiring of payment transactions on an EU webshop – can be provided by a payment service provider from a third country. Please refer to Q&A 4233.

Does the wording “accepted by a natural or legal person other than the electronic money issuer” in the definition of electronic money (article 2.2) imply that a third party (payee) must become the holder of the electronic money as such and thus that there must be a direct contractual arrangement between the e-money issuer and all payees (obligating the payees to accept the issued e-money as a means of payment and granting the payees a right of redemption of the e-money) or should the criterion that a third party must “accept the electronically stored monetary value” be considered to be met where a third party payee accepts our customer’s payment with a card that is backed by the customer’s e-money (as per the description above), regardless of the fact that the payee will not become a holder of the issued e-money as such?

Is an electronic money institution (EMI) allowed to apply negative interest rates to its clients (electronic money holders)?

If a framework contract includes a condition on providing all required information to the payee at least once a month, is the payment service provider still obliged to provide the information to the payee after the execution of individual payment transaction? Or providing monthly information is enough and provision of information separately about each individual transaction is not required anymore?

Would it be acceptable to consider, has a possible comparable guarantee, an increase of own funds’ requirements, in an amount corresponding to the minimum monetary amount calculated in accordance with the EBA’s tool, while ensuring that this amount would be fulfilled with highly liquid assets?

Is an exchange rate mark-up (the difference between the interbank rate and the exchange rate offered by the PSP to its PSUs) to be considered as part of ‘all charges payable’ as per PSD2 and the ‘currency conversion charges’ as per CBPR2 prior to the initiation of the payment? How should PSPs disclose this in the payment flow?

Should a payment institution that also has a crowdfunding license meet the capital requirements of both authorizations in aggregate?

Due to fraud prevention reasons, could an ASPSP (Account Servicing Payment Service Provider) block a payment order initiated through a PISP (Payment Initiation Service Provider) despite having informed the PISP immediately upon authentication, that the payment was going to be executed (i.e., after having provided the PISP with the code ACSC (AcceptedSettlementCompleted) under the Berlin Group Standard)? In that scenario who should bear the liability if the payment is not executed but, nonetheless, the payee delivered the good or service promptly after being informed by the PISP of the successful initiation of the payment?

Would the answer be different if the ASPSP had simply confirmed the sufficiency of funds as stated in the EBA Opinion on the implementation of the RTS on SCA and CSC (EBA-Op-2018-04)?
 

May a PI authorised and operating in an EU Member State use a credit institution based in a third country (e.g. UK) for the purpose of safeguarding funds in accordance with Art. 10(1)(a) of PSD2?

"Question: Regarding ARTs or EMTs under MiCAR, what services provided in or into the EU constitute an offering to the public, a seeking admission to trading or a placing of an ART or EMT?

For credit instruments that include issuer-specific optionality, do both general interest rate vega and credit spread vega risk factors need to be considered as part of the SBM? 

In the case of instruments guaranteed by a guarantor (such as guaranteed bonds), can that guarantor be used as the basis for calculating the DRC for non-securitisations and the SBM-CSR for non-securitisations? 

Do the calculations of the DRC for non-securitisations and SBM-CSR for non-securitisations have to be based on the individual ‘issuers’/‘obligors’, or could these calculations alternatively be based on the concept of a ‘group of issuers/obligors’ consisting of e.g. a conglomerate (and e.g. represented by an ‘ultimate parent’ corresponding to the ‘head of group’ or ‘parent company’)?  

Which set of seniority categories shall be utilised and how should they be ranked as the basis for offsetting the gross JTD amounts of short exposures and long exposures within the DRC calculations for non-securitisations?