BELGIUM Law and Practice Contributed by: Joan Carette, Philippe De Prez and Thomas Derval, Simont Braun
about the lender and the credit must be provided to the customer (usually on a “durable medium”). These obligations have an important impact on the onboard - ing of clients, especially in a B2C context. Signature Obligation Lastly, it must be noted that credit contracts con - cluded with consumers require a written or a quali - fied electronic signature. This obligation also has a significant impact on the conclusion of online credit agreements with consumers. Belgians can easily sign electronic contracts using their Belgian eID, or even completely electronically using a mobile application of qualified trust service providers such as itsme®. Both of these signatures are qualified as electronic signatures under the eIDAS Regulation, and thus have the equivalent legal effect of a handwritten signature. eIDAS 2 is expected to further facilitate digital contracting by enabling quali - fied trust services to be used via the EUDI Wallet ecosystem and by reinforcing the EU-wide interoper - ability of high-assurance e-identification for remote onboarding. In 2023, the doctrine of functional equivalent – which assimilates, under certain conditions, physical pro - cesses to online processes – was extended to all contractual mechanisms (Article 5.30 of the Belgian Civil Code). 4.3 Sources of Funds for Fiat Currency Loans The source of funds for loans will depend mainly on the nature of the lender rather than on the nature of the credit, as follows. • CIs use client deposits to grant loans (money mul - tiplier), provided that they keep sufficient deposit reserves at the European Central Bank (ECB) (see EU Regulation 2021/378 of 22 January 2021 on the application of minimum reserve requirements) and respect EU Directive 2013/36/EU of 26 June 2013 (CRD IV) on access to the activity of CIs and the prudential supervision of CIs and investment firms, and EU Regulation 575/2013 of 26 June 2013 (CRR) on prudential requirements for CIs and investment firms. Note that these texts have been modified by Regulation (EU) 2024/1623 (CRR3) and
Directive (EU) 2024/1619 (CRD6). These reforms strengthen the prudential framework, but do not affect CIs’ exclusive right to take deposits. • Other lenders (which are not CIs), licensed or not, cannot receive refundable deposits under Belgian law (Article 28 of the Law of 11 July 2018 on the offer of investment instruments to the public and the admission of investment instruments to trading on a regulated market – the New Prospectus Law) and cannot create money ex nihilo. Therefore, they can only lend their own funds. • Lenders who operate through crowdfunding plat - forms lend their own funds and, from a legal point of view, the borrower issues debt instruments. 4.4 Syndication of Fiat Currency Loans Syndication of online loans is not a current market practice in Belgium, mainly because loan syndication is reserved to the biggest borrowers and the biggest funding transactions. The largest financing contracts are generally not concluded online. There is no specific regulation in this respect; only a set of market practice documentation. While crowdlending can resemble syndication in terms of multiple funders, it is now a regulated activ - ity under Regulation (EU) 2020/1503 and is authorised and supervised in Belgium by the FSMA. 5. Payment Processors 5.1 Payment Processors’ Use of Payment Rails In Belgium, there are two main payment systems: • CEC (Centre for Exchange and Clearing), a domes - tic retail payment system for retail payment instru - ments, based on multilateral netting and settle - ment; and • TARGET-BE, the Belgian component of T2 for real-time gross settlement, which is used for set - tling central bank operations, primarily related to monetary policy, for large interbank transfers and client operations.
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