Licensing of Payments Service Providers
On 21 July 2023, AFIA made a submission to Treasury regarding their consultation on the licensing of Payments Services Providers (PSPs).
Our key recommendations were that:
PSPs should only be required to have either an Australian Credit License (ACL) or an Australian Financial Services License (AFSL), not both.
Care should be taken to, in Treasury’s own words, ‘avoid duplication’ of existing regulatory obligations.
The licensing framework should be designed to be consistent with frameworks in comparable international jurisdictions, to facilitate compliance for entities operating internationally.
There will be a separate consultation later in 2023 focused on the specific obligations to be applied to each PSP type, as this consultation was mainly concerned with categorising the types of PSPs that will be included in the new regime.