PIS and AIS services under the AML rulgulations

We advised national payment institution in:

Legal opinion on the application of AML obligations to PIS and AIS services

PIS (payment initiation service) and AIS (account information service) are payment services introduced under the Payment Services Directive 2015/2366 (PSD2). They differ from classic payment services due to the fact in their provision the payment service provider does not take possession of users’ funds. These services are based on the flow of information – the PIS service leads to the initiation of a payment transaction subsequently executed by the acount servicing payment service provider (ASPSP) of the payer (user of the PIS service), while the AIS service results in the provision of consolidated information on one or more payment accounts held by the payment service user.

Despite the differences separating PIS and AIS from traditional payment services, providers of these services are now literally covered by the Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Law (AML Law). However, this issue raises a number of practical concerns. In particular, it is not clear in what situations and under what rules due dilligence measures (which are required to be applied under the AML Law) should be applied to customer of these services. The situation is worsened by the lack of unambiguous statements from supervisory authorities in this regard.

Opinion we prepared covered many aspects of the application of AML obligations to PIS and AIS services: from the application to these services of the concepts of customer and transaction used in the AML legislation, through a comprehensive analysis of the obligations and scope of application of due dilligence measures to PIS and AIS services, and ending with the notification obligations of providers (obliged institutions) to the General Inspector of Financial Information (GIIF).

DLK’s advisory included:

• A legal analysis of the application of AML obligations to PIS and AIS services
• An assessment of the legal risks associated with the approach taken in implementing these obligations