Payments Regulatory Deadlines to Watch in March

Each month, we leverage data from our Horizon Scanning Regulatory Deadlines Calendar to bring you a glimpse of the key response deadlines and legislation effective dates coming up, so you can plan and take action around some of the most important regulatory developments unfolding right now.

In March, there are 39 regulatory deadlines on the horizon — with 28 key consultation periods coming to an end and requiring a response, and 11 actionable deadlines to be aware of coming into effect.

What are the regulatory deadlines to watch in March?

European Union

In December last year, the European supervisory authorities (ESAs) launched a public consultation on the second batch of policy products under the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) - which comes into effect at the start of next year. Firms need to submit their feedback to the ESAs by Monday, March 4, 2024. The batch includes four draft regulatory technical standards (RTS), one set of draft implementing technical standards (ITS) and two sets of guidelines. The focuses include incident reporting templates and sub-contracting. 

United Arab Emirates

The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) is consulting on the regulatory framework for crypto-assets and firms have until Monday, March 4, 2024 to submit responses to the regulator. The DFSA has requested that interested parties review the proposed changes throughout the consultation paper and answer the 12 questions at the end of each section to provide input on the amendments. The consultation discusses issues such as whether rules on fiat crypto token reserves are sufficiently stringent to address the risks associated with stablecoin, as well as amendments to application fees.

South Korea‍

South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) launched a consultation in early February on proposed amendments to the Electronic Financial Supervision Regulations.  Among other things, the amendments aim to enhance the security of electronic financial institutions against IT security-related risks. The consultation also proposes expanding the scope of the obligation to establish a disaster recovery plan.Stakeholders have until March 12, 2024, to submit feedback. 

European Union

Participants in the European Payments Council’s SEPA payment scheme need to have migrated to the 2019 version of ISO 20022 by March 17, 2024. Originally, this was supposed to happen on November 19, 2023, however, the deadline was pushed back due to reported operational delays and/or the need for additional testing time to ensure a safe migration.

Hong Kong

Authorised institutions need to come up to standard with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s electronic banking security requirements by March 31, 2024. The HKMA issued a circular to all authorised institutions on “Enhancement to Security of Electronic Banking Services” at the end of October last year. The circular requires authorised institutions to implement a package of new enhancement measures to further strengthen the security of electronic banking services in the jurisdiction. The measures, formulated in collaboration with the Hong Kong Association of Banks and the Hong Kong Police Force, fall under three categories:

• Enhanced monitoring for suspicious transactions and additional customer authentication to counter fraud
• Empowering customers to safeguard bank accounts
• Containing damage to customers in case of serious breach

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The Vixio PaymentsCompliance Horizon Scanning tool shows you real-time updates on regulatory deadlines and trends across 140+ global jurisdictions, including all US states, at the click of a button. Its Regulatory Deadlines Calendar feature sets out effective dates for published legislation, closing dates for consultation periods on proposed regulatory developments, and deadlines for specific requests for information by regulatory authorities.

We’ve only shown you a snapshot of March’s deadlines. Want to see them all? Book a demo with a member of our team, who can show you the full February Regulatory Deadlines Calendar.

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