EU Council publishes its first-reading position on PSD3, sending the payments licence overhaul to Parliament's second reading

The Council of the European Union has adopted its position at first reading on the third Payment Services Directive. The document, 8535/26 (interinstitutional file 2023/0209(COD)), is dated Brussels, 21 October 2026 and appeared in the Council register on 23 October 2026, where Norton Rose Fulbright reported it the same day.

It carries the directive's consolidated text as 'Directive (EU) 2026/...' on payment services in the internal market, amending the Settlement Finality Directive (98/26/EC) and MiCA (Regulation (EU) 2023/1114) and repealing both PSD2 (Directive (EU) 2015/2366) and the second E-Money Directive (2009/110/EC). The draft statement of the Council's reasons (8535/26 ADD 1) names three main elements of the agreed directive: the e-money framework is harmonised by repealing EMD2 and folding electronic money institutions into the payment institution authorisation and supervisory regime as a single institutional stream; the rules on safeguarding user funds are strengthened so that those funds are insulated from a liquidation estate, and payment institutions' access to central bank settlement systems is optimised; and a dedicated set of access-to-cash provisions simplifies the deployment of independent ATMs and allows cash withdrawal services without a mandatory commercial purchase.

Article 49 gives Member States 21 months from entry into force to adopt, publish and apply the transposing measures, and Article 50 sets entry into force at 20 days after publication in the Official Journal. The same statement of reasons dates the procedure: the Commission proposed the PSD3 and PSR package on 28 June 2023, Parliament adopted its initial reports in April 2024, Coreper agreed the negotiating mandate in June 2025, trilogues opened on 9 July 2025 and the final political trilogue was held in Strasbourg on 26 November 2025.

Coreper approved the compromise on 22 April 2026 and Parliament's ECON committee on 5 May 2026; on 13 May 2026 the ECON chair wrote to the Presidency undertaking to recommend that plenary accept the Council's position at second reading, subject to legal-linguistic verification, if the Council adopted it in line with the provisional agreement.

PSD3 is the licence every acquirer, PSP and e-money institution in the EEA operates under, so the text the Council has now fixed sets the authorisation, capital, safeguarding and supervision terms of European acceptance for the next decade, and it does so with a dated clock attached rather than as a political agreement. Three of the agreed elements reach acceptance economics directly.

Merging the e-money regime into the payment institution regime puts wallet operators, collecting PSPs and e-money issuers through one authorisation and supervision stream, which is a re-licensing exercise for a large part of the chain between a merchant and a scheme. Insulating safeguarded funds from a liquidation estate speaks to the risk a merchant discovers only when its PSP fails and settlement money is caught in the estate.

Optimised access to central bank settlement systems loosens the structural dependence of payment institutions on sponsor banks, which is one of the cost and resilience asymmetries between bank-owned acquirers and independent ones. The 21-month transposition period, counted from 20 days after Official Journal publication, is now a planning date supervisors and licence holders can work back from, and the next formal step is Parliament's second reading, which the ECON chair's May letter has already pre-committed to a recommendation of acceptance.

• When Parliament schedules and holds the second reading, and whether it accepts the Council's position without amendment as the ECON chair's letter undertook
• The equivalent first-reading step on the companion Payment Services Regulation, which is where the merchant-facing conduct rules of the package sit
• The Official Journal publication date, because it starts both the 20-day entry into force and the 21-month transposition clock
• How national supervisors handle the re-authorisation of e-money institutions into the payment institution regime, which is the part of the package that lands on firms in the acceptance chain first

• data.consilium.europa.eu
• Council of the EU, 8535/26 ADD 1: Draft statement of the Council's reasons (PSD3)
• Norton Rose Fulbright, Regulation Tomorrow, 23 Oct 2026