Article 10
Safeguarding requirements
1.
Member States or competent authorities shall require payment institutions which provide payment services as referred to in points (1) to (6) of Annex I to this Directive and electronic money institutions as defined in Article 2, point (1), of Directive 2009/110/EC to safeguard all funds which have been received from the payment service users or through another payment service provider for the execution of payment transactions, in either of the following ways:
(a)
funds shall not be commingled at any time with the funds of any natural or legal person other than payment service users on whose behalf the funds are held and, where they are still held by the payment institution or electronic money institution and not yet delivered to the payee or transferred to another payment service provider by the end of the business day following the day when the funds have been received, they shall be deposited in a separate account in a credit institution or in a central bank at the discretion of that central bank, or invested in secure, liquid low-risk assets as defined by the competent authorities of the home Member State; and they shall be insulated in accordance with national law in the interest of the payment service users against the claims of other creditors of the payment institution or electronic money institution, in particular in the event of insolvency;
(b)
funds shall be covered by an insurance policy or some other comparable guarantee from an insurance company or a credit institution, which does not belong to the same group as the payment institution or electronic money institution itself, for an amount equivalent to that which would have been segregated in the absence of the insurance policy or other comparable guarantee, payable in the event that the payment institution or electronic money institution is unable to meet its financial obligations.
2.
Where a payment institution is required to safeguard funds under paragraph 1 and a portion of those funds is to be used for future payment transactions with the remaining amount to be used for non-payment services, that portion of the funds to be used for future payment transactions shall also be subject to the requirements of paragraph 1. Where that portion is variable or not known in advance, Member States shall allow payment institutions to apply this paragraph on the basis of a representative portion assumed to be used for payment services provided such a representative portion can be reasonably estimated on the basis of historical data to the satisfaction of the competent authorities.