EU Council adopts its first-reading position on PSD3 and the PSR, leaving only Parliament's second reading

The Council of the EU adopted its position at first reading on both halves of the June 2023 payment services package, in documents dated Brussels, 21 October 2026 and published on 23 October: 8535/26 for PSD3 (interinstitutional file 2023/0209(COD)) and 8543/26 for the PSR (2023/0210(COD)). The Council's statements of reasons confirm the texts reflect the compromise agreed with Parliament at the final political trilogue of 26 November 2025, which Coreper approved on 22 April 2026 and Parliament's ECON committee on 5 May 2026.

PSD3 repeals the E-Money Directive and folds e-money institutions into the payment institution authorisation and supervision regime, strengthens safeguarding of user funds, opens payment institution access to central bank settlement systems and adds provisions on independent ATM deployment and cash withdrawal without a purchase. The PSR carries the IBAN-to-name verification duty before credit transfers, strict PSP liability for spoofing fraud, shared liability for search engines and platforms that carry unverified financial advertising, a prohibition on technical obstacles or discriminatory delays against third-party access to account data, and a requirement that mobile device manufacturers and electronic communication service providers grant third-party apps access to the device features they need on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

The directive enters into force 20 days after publication in the Official Journal and applies 21 months later, with two PSR articles applying after 27 months.

This is the step the corpus was watching for, and it arrived ahead of the indicative December 2026 schedule: with the Council position adopted, only Parliament's second-reading vote stands between the package and the Official Journal, and the ECON chair's letter of 13 May 2026 already commits her to recommending that the plenary accept it. For acceptance specifically, the FRAND device-access duty is the provision that decides whether girocard, Wero and other European methods can reach an iPhone wallet, running in parallel with the UK CMA's proposal to force Apple to open iPhone NFC.

The e-money and payment institution merger rewrites licensing for a large part of the PSP population, and the 21-month application clock that acquirers, PSPs and gateways plan their SCA, fraud-liability and open-banking work against is now close enough to date.

Parliament's second-reading vote, indicatively December 2026, and then the date of publication in the Official Journal, which sets the 20-day entry into force and starts the 21-month application clock (27 months for the two PSR articles). Also whether the ECON chair's recommendation holds without reopening any part of the compromise.

• data.consilium.europa.eu
• Council of the EU, 8535/26 ADD 1: Draft statement of the Council's reasons (PSD3)
• Council of the EU, 8543/26 ADD 1 REV 1: Draft statement of the Council's reasons (PSR)