Assessing the Authorisation Regime under PSD2: Do (Different) Supervisory Practices Prevent the Achievement of a Level Playing Field in the EU?

The research aims at empirically investigating whether a correlation can be identified between the presence of payment institutions and e-money institutions authorized in each Member State and the restrictiveness of the supervisory practices of individual NCAs. In particular, the analysis is aimed at ascertaining whether the same risks, same rules, same supervision principle can be deemed to be fulfilled within the European payment services sector and – if not – what countermeasures can be taken to re-establish compliance with it. Building on the data available in the Peer review on authorizations under PSD2 Report published by the EBA, the research inspects the impact of different supervisory policies – together with elements such as the overall “FinTech friendliness” of the considered Member States – on the amount of authorization granted in different Member States, and tries to identify whether the different variables considered are likely to have an impact in terms of potential supervisory arbitrage, henceforth reducing the effectiveness of the harmonization interventions in the Single Market. This will be functional to identify those areas in which procedural harmonization might be advisable, as well as to pinpoint weaknesses in the level playing field model, as it is currently implemented.