Who reports to CESOP, and when
The duty falls on payment service providers under PSD2: credit institutions, electronic money institutions, post office giro institutions and payment institutions, including small ones exempted under Article 32 of that directive.
A provider keeps records once its payment services correspond to more than 25 cross-border payments to the same payee in a calendar quarter. A payment is cross-border when the payer is in one Member State and the payee is in another or outside the EU, judged by the IBAN or another identifier of each.
Where at least one of the payee's providers is in a Member State, the payer's provider does not report the payment, though it still counts towards the 25.
What is reported
- The payee's name, and VAT or tax number and address if available
- The payee's IBAN or other account identifier
- The BIC or other identifier of the reporting provider
- For each payment: date and time, amount and currency, and a reference
- The Member State the payment came from, and any refunds
- Whether the payment was initiated at the merchant's physical premises
About the payer, only the location is kept.
Deadlines, retention and what CESOP means for a product
Member States collect the data by the end of the month following each calendar quarter, on a standard electronic form, and pass it to CESOP, where only Eurofisc liaison officials may consult it. Providers keep their records for three calendar years from the end of the year of the payment.
For an acquirer or an institution with merchants, CESOP is a quarterly report built from the ledger and from payee data collected at onboarding, filed in the home Member State and in host Member States where services are provided.
Where CESOP shows up in a platform
Modules that do the work
- Compliance reportingTransaction monitoring, the Travel Rule and regulatory reports, ready for your regulator.
- Card acquiringCard acceptance on the phone, in store and online, through the acquirer you choose.
- LedgerThe double-entry book of record behind every balance, fee and transfer.
- Merchant onboardingBusiness sign-up, verification and underwriting, from application to first payment.
Platforms that need it
Guides that go deeper
- How to become a PSP or a payment facilitatorGateway, acquirer, payment facilitator or payment institution: where the licence line falls, how the card schemes register payment facilitators, what merchant KYB demands, and the UK and UAE rules.
- EMI or payment institution licence in the EU, and the agent routeWhat an e-money institution and a payment institution may do in the EU, the capital each needs, safeguarding, passporting, and launching as an agent first.
Where it is written
The laws and standards this page's facts come from.
- Council Directive (EU) 2020/284, Articles 243a to 243d of the VAT Directive (EUR-Lex)
- Council Regulation (EU) 2020/283, Articles 24a to 24d (EUR-Lex)
- Directive (EU) 2015/2366, PSD2, consolidated: Article 1 (EUR-Lex)
General information, not legal advice: what applies to you depends on your services and your market.