On January 9, 2020, the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic (the “Central Bank”) by means of Communication “A” 6859 (the “Communication”) regulates certain aspects of the activity of Payment Service Providers (Proveedores de Servicios de Pago, “PSP” by its Spanish acronym).
The Communication define the PSP as legal entitites which, without being financial entities, perform at least one function within a retail payment scheme (esquema de pago minorista), within the overall framework of the payment system, such as offering payment accounts –freely available fund accounts offered by PSP to their clients to order and/or receive payments- and determine the following:
(i) customers’ funds credited to payment accounts offered by PSP must be immediately available at all times;
(ii) 100% of the customers’ funds must be deposited – at all times- in sight banking accounts in Argentine pesos in Argentine financial entities;
(iii) at the express request of the customer, the PSP may apply the balances of the payment accounts to perform operations in money market mutual funds (fondos comunes de dinero) in Argentina. For this purpose, it will be required that the invested balances be reported separately from the rest of the balances;
(iv) for the execution of transactions for their own account, PSPs must use an account of their own which must be a different account where the customers’ funds are deposited; and
(v) in case of non-compliance with the provisions of the Communication, the sanctions established in Sections 41 and 42 of the Financial Entities Law No. 21.256, as amended, shall be applied.
The Central Bank established that the provisions included in the Communication must be operative at the latest by 31 January 2020.
Access to the complete text of the Communication “A” 6859 can be here.
This publication does not offer a legal opinion on specific matters. If necessary, you should seek specialized legal counsel.
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