The European Commission has published a report to the European Parliament and the Council on the implementation and impact on the Second Electronic Money Directive (EMD2). The Commission has also published an annex to the report that sets out the number of e-money institutions that are active in each Member State.
The report was originally due to be published no later than 1 November 2012 but this was delayed on the basis that a majority of Member States had failed to implement the EMD2 by its transposition date of 30 April 2011.
The report describes the transposition of the EMD2 (section 3), reviews its application and its impact to date (section 4) and the impact of the recent revision of the Payment Services Directive (PSD2) (section 5) and the relationship between EMD2 and the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (section 6). It also identifies the main emerging issues resulting from the application of the EMD2 (section 7), and draws certain conclusions in section 8.
The report concludes the following:
- the overall assessment of the EMD2 is positive;
- there is evidence of an increased interest in electronic money licenses and cross-border activity through the use of passporting since 2011;
- further improvements could be made to enhance the current regulatory framework;
- concrete improvements could be delivered in the short or medium term by providing guidance in the following areas: the classification of products as e-money, the application of the limited network provision and the distinction between the concept of an agent and a distributor in the context of e-money;
- further consideration could be given, in the longer term, to promoting maximum harmonisation for specific provisions, in particular with regard to the currently optional waiver regime foreseen for small electronic money institutions under Article 9 of the EMD2. Further analysis could also be conducted on the development of an intermediate category of a ‘large limited network’ that would be subject to some but not all EMD2 requirements; and
- a future revision of the EMD2 and its merger with the PSD2 would require further analysis.