The Payment Services Directive was intended to provide more price transparency for users and a level playing field for efficient competition among different payment services by decreasing the inhibiting effects of different legislation, cross-subsidisation and non-cost-based pricing. The...

Credit referencing occurs in many countries of the world with a primary purpose of collecting and providing information to help lenders make better decisions. However, there are many different models ranging from highly comprehensive databases of wide ranging information in the most advanced...

The Data Protection Regulation proposed by the European Commission contains important elements to facilitate and secure personal data flows within the Single Market. A harmonised level of protection of individual data is an important objective and all stakeholders have generally welcomed this...

The second-dip recession in Europe’s periphery has created a poisonous mix, which risks threatening further the financial system and the economy. Against this background, this ECRI Commentary argues that time matters in the household deleveraging cycle and that a swift recovery is one of its...

With the financial crisis, citizens suddenly realized that different levels and forms of depositor protection co-existed in the EU, whereas they had been told for almost 20 years that a single market was in place. Current deposit insurance arrangements in Europe need to be changed, as they match...

This report brings together in a single volume the excellent contributions presented at the high-level conference on “The Future of Retail Banking in Europe: Competition and Regulatory Challenges” held at CEPS on the 10th of June 2009. The conference was jointly organized by the European...

Information asymmetries can severely limit the cross-border border expansion of banks, if entering banks can only obtain incomplete information about potential new clients. Such asymmetries are reduced by credit registers, which distribute financial data on bank clients. This ECRI research...

When it was originally proposed, the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) was hailed for its potential to contribute significantly to making Europe the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy by 2010. All national payments standards were supposed to disappear and be replaced by new...