Dutch central bank can further encourage innovation for payment institutions with a quick win

Article 18.2 in PSD2 (Article 15 in PSD1) on the nature of funds
 in a payment account of a payment institution

It's a logical thing. As the bakery provides bread, banks provide loans and allow savings, e-money institutions offer e-money, payment institutions are allowed to provide payment accounts to their customers. These accounts would neither be redeemable deposits or repayable funds, nor e-money, as the article in the PSD(2) states.

Stricter interpretation by De Nederlandsche Bank 
De Nederlandsche Bank, our local supervisor, however does not appear to allow the above flavour in the Netherlands easily. Companies that have business models in which payment accounts (whether with or without IBAN) are offered, should not be surprised if they are told that the funds would qualify either as redeemable deposits or e-money, with little inbetween.

 As a result, one will not encounter a lot of payment-account issuing by payment institutions in the Netherlands. And this is in spite of the fact that even the Explanatory Memorandum of our Financial Supervision Act explicitly mentioned this possibility.

Other supervisors follow the EU-approach 
Thus we can see issuers from other countries, such as Pocopay from Estonia, offer payment services and payment accounts to students where these can't be offered by local players. On their website, we see this issuer outlining (USING CAPITALS) in the terms and conditions that the funds are not redeemable, to be used for payments and not covered by deposit insurance of any kind.

Other instances can be found in German or French markets, leading to the situation that Dutch payment institutions are restrained in product innovation and less able to compete with PIs from other countries, which may offer a broader solution range to their customers.

Quick win to facilitate innovation in payments in the Netherlands 
There is a clear quick win here in the Netherlands in terms of payment regulation. Instead of claiming that funds are either deposits or e-money, De Nederlandsche Bank should more easily allow payment institutions to also offer the third flavour: non-redeemable funds on payment accounts, used for payment purposes.

Of course, one could raise the question whether it is possible to make such a business model work, but it should be the market that decides rather than the supervisor.

This article is a translation of a contribution to the Financieel Dagblad of July 29, 2017.

EBA concerned about anonimity and security for bitcoin

From May 15th until May 17th, the Bitcoin 2014 conference took place in Amsterdam. One of the break-out sessions was dedicated to the topic of Anti-Money Laundering on Transparent Networks. During this session, Dirk Haubrich of the European Banking Authority (EBA) outlined some of the issues and concerns of the EBA with respect to digital currencies and bitcoin.

In his initial statement Haubrich sketched the concerns of the EBA with respect to:
- the use of digital currencies to transfer the proceeds of crime and act as money transmission,
- the fact that anonimity is a burden to link the transactions to persons,
- seizing assets and restoring or undoing criminal or illegitimate transfers,
- the emergence of a hawalla-like new channel via which international transfers may occur to countries that are on the FATF-sanction list,
- the use of those currencies by terrorists and criminals,
- the integrity of creators of digital currencies.

Role of the EBA
As a part of the discussion, mr Haubrich outlined that the EBA has a specific remit in the area of consumer protection and financial innovation. It is from this perspective that the EBA issued its warning on virtual currencies in December 2013. The question whether or not to further regulate virtual currencies is now being investigated by a cross-sectoral working group of European supervisors. This group will publish its outcome in a couple of months.

When asked to discuss the major challenges for digital currencies, he outlined anonimity and it-security as major topics of concern. In combination with the aforementioned list of concerns, the overall impression was one in which further regulation appeared to be more likely than a continuation of the current hands-off approach.