LITHUANIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Donatas Šliora and Marius Matiukas, ADON legal
may become interchangeable (reducing their uniqueness) and may be classified as fungi - ble; and • dividing a unique NFT into fractional parts for shared ownership renders those fractions non-unique, as each fraction represents a part of the same asset. In all these cases, the NFT could fall under MiCA’s regulatory scope due to its fungibility; however, it is still worth mentioning that these examples are still purely theoretical until MiCA has been properly realised in practice. Regulation of open banking stems from the Law on Payments of the Republic of Lithuania, trans - posing the EU’s Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2). Generally, the Lithuanian legal framework sup - ports open banking by mandating that every financial institution under Lithuanian law devel - op application programming interfaces (APIs) to conduct open banking operations with third parties. 11. Open Banking 11.1 Regulation of Open Banking These imperative obligations both promote a friendly landscape for start-up integration into the market as well as minimise the risks of a potential monopoly of a dominating financial institution, in terms of availability to conduct inter-financial institution transactions by the user. In terms of the influence of PSD2 on open bank - ing in Lithuania, the jurisdiction already had a system co-ordinated by the Lithuanian Bank - ing Association that connected banks, allowing for convenient domestic inter-bank payments.
Open banking, however, eliminated the need for this system as it was more expensive and less extensive than open banking. Overall, while introducing functions that were already some - what implemented in Lithuania, open banking brought many positives by making inter-financial institution transactions cheaper to operate and by providing for a more fintech-friendly land - scape. 11.2 Concerns Raised by Open Banking All financial institutions operating under EU law must be licensed and supervised by competent national or supra-national authorities, meaning that they must adhere to robust data privacy and data security requirements under relevant EU law such as the GDPR and PSD2. Technology providers, while not subject to licensing, must be acquainted with the robust regulation of the fintech landscape as well as data security and protection requirements if they are to provide a competitive product. These compliance requirements became even more intricate with DORA entering into full effect in January 2025. As the supervisor of financial institutions, the Bank of Lithuania defines the following types of fraud. Unauthorised Payment Transactions This includes situations where someone wrong - fully uses or mismanages funds that belong to the payment service user (PSU), which are kept in their payment accounts or in their posses - sion. It also covers any transactions made on 12. Fraud 12.1 Elements of Fraud
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