BELGIUM Law and Practice Contributed by: Joan Carette, Philippe De Prez and Thomas Derval, Simont Braun
and Reality Shares Nasdaq NextGen Economy ETF) currently remain unregulated. 10.11Virtual Currencies Virtual currencies have received many different definitions in Belgium in recent years. They gen - erally are not treated differently to other block - chain assets, except if they qualify as e-money tokens (EMTs) or asset-referenced tokens (ARTs) under MiCA, which are subject to a stricter regime than regular virtual currencies/crypto- assets. With MiCA’s application, the Belgian notion of “virtual currencies” only remains relevant in the context of the FSMA’s marketing rules on crypto, which refer to the marketing of “virtual curren- cies” instead of “crypto-assets” . 10.12Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) NFTs and NFT platforms are in principle sub - ject to the same rules as any other crypto-relat - ed initiative. They are however excluded from the scope of MiCA as well as from the FSMA Regulation of 5 January 2023. Depending on the characteristics and purposes of the NFTs or the structure and activities provided by the platforms, they could fall within scope of certain other existing regulations (eg, through a qualifi - cation as investment instruments).
Strong Customer Authentication (RTS SCA) in September 2019. Consequently, PSPs are required to allow third- party providers (TPPs) to access payment accounts, either through a dedicated interface (interface specific for TPPs) or through their cus - tomer interface. In June 2023, the European Commission pro - posed FIDA. This proposal is currently being dis - cussed by the European legislative chambers. If adopted, FIDA would force financial entities to share data relating to (almost) all financial services with other financial entities and a new type of service provider, the financial information service providers. Effects of PSD2 on Open Banking As the PSD2 and the RTS SCA implementing it only impose limited requirements on the inter - face, without indicating how these results should be obtained and with no standardisation, PSPs are left to decide how to implement proper tech - nical solutions – which leads to difficulties for both the PSPs and the TPPs. However, PSD2 has also fostered innovation as it has prompted incumbents to either innovate internally or to enter into partnerships with new fintech play - ers. In this way, open banking under PSD2 has opened up the field to new financial services providers and TPPs, such as account informa - tion service providers (AISP) and payment initia - tion service providers (PISP). Also, new custom - er authentication methods have been developed or further implemented in existing applications following the RTS SCA, paving the way to a sim - pler and smoother user-friendly atmosphere in financial services offerings.
11. Open Banking 11.1 Regulation of Open Banking
The prudential rules of PSD2 were transposed in the PI & EMI Law, while the conduct of busi - ness rules were inserted in the CEL. The open banking aspect of PSD2 came into force in Bel - gium along with the EU Regulated Technical Standards 2018/389 of 27 November 2017 on
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