On 11 September 2025, the European Commission (Commission) issued its second report under Article 27 of the Payment Accounts Directive (PAD).

Background

Under Article 27 of PAD, the Commission is required to prepare a report providing the following information:

  • Compliance by payment service providers with Articles 4, 5 and 6 of PAD.
  • Compliance by Member States with the requirements to ensure the existence of comparison websites pursuant to Article 7 of PAD.
  • The number of payment accounts that have been switched and the proportion of applications for switching that have been refused.
  • The number of credit institutions offering payment accounts with basic features, the number of such accounts that have been opened and the proportion of applications for payment accounts with basic features that have been refused.

As set out in Article 27, the report is based solely on data provided by the Member States.

Findings

The report makes the following tentative conclusions given certain persistent data gaps:

  • The information and transparency requirements under Articles 4, 5 and 6 are generally being complied with, suggesting an overall reduction of consumer detriment.
  • Comparison websites are fully operational in almost all Member States.
  • On payment account switching, the switching service was used by over 2.5 million customers in 2023, down from the previous high in 2022 of 2.86 million. Since 2016, there have been a total of 17.6 million account switches.
  • There are significant differences across Member States regarding the number of switching applications that are refused.
  • On Payment Accounts with Basic Features (PABFs), gaps still remain in the data where some Member States have not provided the number of new account openings.
  • The rate of rejections of PABFs applications varies significantly across Member States.

Next steps

The Commission will follow up the findings of the report by discussing them with Member States. The Commission will also continue to work with Member States to ensure more robust and comparable data going forward.