PSD2 - Reporting Requirements
Directive 2015/2366/EU on payment services (PSD2) was transposed into Irish law, with effect from 13 January 2018, by the European Union (Payment Services) Regulations, 2018 (S.I. No.6 of 2018, hereafter referred to as the Payment Services Regulations 2018). The Payment Services Regulations 2018 place a number of reporting requirements on payment service providers (PSPs). The expectations of the Central Bank in terms of PSPs meeting these requirements are set out below.
Major Incident Reporting
Regulation 119 of the Payment Services Regulations 2018 provides that, where a major operational or security incident occurs, a PSP is required to notify the Central Bank without undue delay. The EBA Revised Guidelines on major incident reporting under PSD2, define an operational or security incident as, “a singular event or a series of linked events unplanned by the payment service provider which has or will likely have an adverse impact on the integrity, availability, confidentiality, and/or authenticity of payment-related services.” The EBA Revised Guidelines set out specific criteria for the classification of an operational or security incident as being a major incident, and provide that PSPs should submit an initial report of a major incident to the Central Bank within four hours from the moment the incident has been classified as major. The incident classification exercise should be completed in a timely manner after the incident has been detected, but no later than 24 hours after detection.
Reports should be submitted through the Central Bank’s Online Reporting (ONR) channel, which is available to receive reports at all times, i.e., both during and outside of business hours.
Central Bank expectations where a PSP has not classified an incident within four hours of detection
If a PSP has not completed the incident classification exercise within 4 hours of detection of the incident, the Central Bank expects the PSP to notify its supervisory team in the Central Bank, using phone or email channels, that an incident has occurred and is under review.
If it transpires that the incident is not major, the PSP should promptly (and no later than 24 hours after the detection of the incident) inform its supervisory team, via phone or email.
Reporting template
The Central Bank requires PSPs to use this template when reporting a major incident. The template is comprised of three sections that the Central Bank expects PSPs to populate until the conclusion of the incident. Please use this guidance document when populating the template.
The template contains further information on how to populate the required fields in the “Instructions” and “Explanatory notes” tabs. The three types of reports are:
Initial report
PSPs are required to submit the initial report within four hours from the moment the incident has been classified as major. The initial report requires PSPs to provide basic information on the incident as well as a general description on what has occurred. PSPs should complete the initial incident report template on a best efforts basis.
Intermediate report
PSPs are required to submit an intermediate report within three working days from the submission of the initial report, unless regular activities have been recovered and business is back to normal sooner, in which case an intermediate report should be submitted at that point. PSPs should also submit an intermediate report when they become aware of significant changes since the submission of the previous report. The intermediate report should contain detailed information on the incident and its consequences. If the incident is not resolved within three working days, PSPs should continue to send intermediate reports when there is a significant change from the previous report until business as usual activities have resumed.
Final report
PSPs must submit their final report within a maximum of 20 working days after business is deemed back to normal. The final report should contain detailed information on the root cause, and actual figures on the impact of the incident to replace any potential estimates.