Source/Date Brief description

Directive (EU) 2015/ 2366

Payment Services (PSD II)

Developments in Belgian Payment Services Regulation

The Law of 19 July 2018, that entered into force on 9 August 2018, implements certain provisions relating to the PSD II in several books of the Belgian Economic Law Code. The prudential supervisory provisions, which regulate the public law aspects of the PSD II as there are the licensing requirements, were already implemented earlier this year by Law of 11 March 2018.

From now onwards payment transactions carried out in the EEA in a non-EEA currency and transactions whereby only one payment service provider is located in the EEA shall fall within the scope of the PSD II, except with a few exceptions.

Third-party payment (TPP) services as there are the payment initiation services and account information services shall be included in the scope of the new law.

Belgium did not make use of option to treat micro-enterprises the same way as consumers, meaning that the corporate opt-out possibility for certain business of conduct rules can be used for micro-enterprises as well.

The payment service providers shall need to apply stronger customer authentication when a customer accesses its payment accounts online, initiates an electronic payment or carries out any action through a remote channel. If not, the payer will not be accountable for the losses in case of an unauthorized transaction, except in the case of fraud. The legal requirements to strong customer authentication are subject to further implementation through the technical standards of the EBA.

Merchants are prohibited to charge the payer for any costs related to the use of a payment instrument regardless of the type of payment instrument.

The payment service user will only be liable for unauthorized payment transactions resulting from the use of a lost or stolen payment instrument up to maximum amount of 50 EUR. No losses shall be borne by the payment service user as of the moment the loss or theft of the payment instrument has been reported. The payment service provider will also have to bear the losses in the case of the user's gross negligence where the payment service provider did not require strong customer authentication when executing the contested payment transaction. The blocking of a payment instrument will need to be provided free of charge and accessible 24/7. Payment service providers must respond to clients' complaints within 15 working days under the new rules.

The information obligation under PSD II have largely remained unchanged. The payment service providers have been granted 4 months after the coming into force of this law to update its contractual documentation.

For consistency reasons under the AML the register with regard to all payment transactions must be stored for a period of 10 years.

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