(1)

Pursuant to Article 15(1) of Directive (EU) 2015/2366, the European Banking Authority (EBA) is required to develop, operate and maintain an electronic central register that contains information as notified by the competent authorities in accordance with paragraph 2 of that Article.

(2)

In order to ensure that the information contained in the electronic central register is accurately presented, EBA should ensure that the insertion or modification of information is carried out in a secure manner. To that end, EBA should grant personal access to the application of the register to members of the staff of the competent authorities. EBA and the competent authorities which have decided to transmit information to EBA automatically should ensure that safe and proportionate encryption techniques are used in the end-points and throughout the transmission of the information.

(3)

Considering that it is necessary that the electronic central register contains standardised and consistent information for all payment institutions and electronic money institutions established in the Union, presented in the same format, the application of the register should perform data validation before any information inserted or modified by the competent authorities is made publicly available.

(4)

It is necessary to ensure the authenticity, integrity and non-repudiation of the information contained in the electronic central register. EBA should therefore guarantee that the information is safely stored and that any inserted or modified information has been properly recorded.

(5)

In order to enable payment service users and other interested parties to use the electronic central register efficiently, it is necessary that the application of the register be developed in a way that guarantees that it operate in a reliable manner and be accessible without interruptions.

(6)

It is desirable that the users of the electronic central register be able to efficiently search the information in the register. Therefore, the information should be searchable on the basis of a number of different search criteria.

(7)

In order to fulfil the needs of the payment industry, EBA should make the content of the register available for download through a standardised file. This would enable all interested parties to automatically search information in that file

(8)

This Regulation is based on the draft regulatory technical standards submitted by EBA to the Commission.

(9)

EBA has conducted open public consultations on the draft regulatory technical standards on which this Regulation is based, analysed the potential related costs and benefits and requested the opinion of the Banking Stakeholder Group established in accordance with Article 37 of Regulation (EU) No 1093/2010 of the European Parliament and of the Council (2),