BELGIUM Law and Practice Contributed by: Joan Carette, Philippe De Prez and Thomas Derval, Simont Braun
Regtechs Belgium counts many regtechs providing solu - tions to all verticals of the financial sector. They cover a broad scope of services, amongst others identification services, authentication services, information analysis, transaction monitoring, platform as a service, etc. A recent trend also includes fintechs active in ESG. 2.2 Regulatory Regime PSD2 The regime for payment verticals is governed by the Belgian Law of 11 March 2018 on the status and supervision of payment institutions and electronic money institutions (the “PI & EMI Law” ) transposing the EU Directive 2015/2366 of 25 November 2015 on payment services in the internal market (PSD2). This transposition has been very straightforward, and Belgium does not have any significant “gold plating” . While the legal texts are generally a copy-paste of the European legislation, their interpretation by the relevant Belgian regulator (the National Bank of Belgium, or NBB) may differ from other Euro - pean jurisdictions. For instance, the regulator interprets the notions of “payment services” and “payment accounts” quite broadly. E-money Contrary to other regulators, the NBB reserves the qualification of “e-money” to very specific prepaid products and does not automatically consider as such all wallets/account solu - tions. In practice, this interpretation has no real impact and business models developed under an e-money licence abroad are pursued in Bel - gium under a payment institution licence. 2.3 Compensation Models Compensation models in the payments industry vary significantly depending on the actual appli - cation. Personal payment applications are often
offered free of charge for the user (or included in the general services if offered by an incumbent bank). On B2B and especially in FX service pro - vision, compensation models are often inspired by the (anticipated) volumes of FX payments generated by clients. In both cases, regulated market players are subject to pre-contractual information require - ments, including a disclosure obligation on the pricing of their services. However, the extent of such requirements will depend on the customers (consumers or others). 2.4 Variations Between the Regulation of Fintech and Legacy Players Most financial regulations originate from EU leg - islation, which does not differentiate between fintech and legacy players. However, EU regu - lators should apply them in a proportionate manner, which allows for some differentiation in practice. The Belgian regulator follows this and applies “same business, same risks, same rules” principle which, combined with the “proportion- ality” principle, provides for a strict but generally pragmatic approach. 2.5 Regulatory Sandbox In Belgium, there is no regulatory sandbox. How - ever, the NBB and the Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) have set up a joint and unique Fintech Contact Point, allowing fin - tech entrepreneurs to contact them directly and openly discuss the regulatory aspects of their products or services. According to the Belgian regulators, this approach should be seen as “soundbox” (ie, a possibility to speak with the regulator outside any concrete licence applica - tion), rather than an actual sandbox. In general, Belgian regulators have a strict but pragmatic approach towards fintech companies. They are open to innovation and to organising informal
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