The Dutch Central Bank (De Nederlandsche Bank, DNB) recently published a news item in which it notes that research has shown that electronic trading platforms are providing payment services without the required authorisation.

In the Netherlands there used to be an exception to the licence obligation for payment service providers if the payment services were performed as an ancillary activity. With the implementation of the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) in February 2019 in Dutch law, this exception was removed and the DNB previously issued a communicated about this. DNB calls upon these parties to either cease activities immediately and to leave them to a licensed payment service provider, or to apply for a licence to conduct the business of a payment service provider. When determining whether enforcement measures will imposed on these parties, DNB will take into account the manner in which and within what term these parties ceased to operate without the required authorisation.