Articles

German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) publishes guidance on Bitcoins
Following recent legal developments regarding Bitcoins, such as the US court decisions in the cases of “Bitcoin Foundation” and “Trendon Savers & Bitcoin Savings Trust”, a US Congress hearing on Bitcoins, the prohibition of the receipt of Bitcoins by financial service providers in China as well as the warnings issued by the French...

PSD2 – Lieferheld & Co – No more handling of payments by eCommerce platforms?
As is generally known, the supervisory authorities have had to decide on numerous negative clearances regarding eCommerce platforms over the past two years. These were – in their own understandable interest – intending to collect payments from end-consumers for vendors of goods and services offered on the platform. In most cases these...

PSD2 – Future authorisation requirements for department store cards, gift vouchers, petrol cards and stadium cards? The new limited network exception
On 24th of July 2013 the European Commission published a proposal for a new Directive on payment services in the internal market (PSD2), repealing the previous payment services Directive from 13th of November 2007 (2007/64/EC – PSD1). Within the framework of PSD2 the Commission has closely reviewed the exception for limited networks. was...

PSD2 - Third party payment service providers: What effect does PSD2 have on services such as Sofort, IDeal and Trustly?
On 24th of July 2013 the European Commission published a proposal for a new Directive on payment services in the internal market (PSD2), repealing the previous payment services Directive from 13th of November 2007 (2007/64/EC – PSD1). The draft creates, among numerous other proposals, a new category of institutions requiring authorisation. The...