The EMA has responded to the Irish Department of Finance’s consultation on the implementation of the Payment Accounts Directive (PAD). The EMA supports the aims of the Directive: to improve transparency around fees, facilitate switching between accounts, and ensure access to basic bank accounts. Similar to the response to HMT, the EMA expressed concern about the lack of clarity around the scope of the Directive, and proposed that the scope be more clearly defined. If not, it could bring a wide variety of e-money accounts into the scope unnecessarily, such as prepaid cards or online wallets, which are generally considerably different from bank current accounts in terms of consumer usage and purpose. Read the EMA response.
