Quarterly provider reports to the NBP and the anti-crisis shield

Due to the lapse on March 31, 2020 of the first quarter of 2020, payment service providers, i.e. acquirers, issuers of payment instruments and issuers of electronic money have until the end of April to submit to the NBP quarterly information referred to in art. 14a-c of the Act of 19 August 2011 on the provision of payment services (i.e., Journal of Laws of 2019, item 659, as amended). This information relates to the scale of the suppliers’ activities and the transactions which are carried out or through them. So far, the draft anti-crisis shield proceeded by Parliament does not provide for suspension or extension of the deadlines for submitting quarterly information to the NBP. This means that in order to avoid criminal and administrative liability for failure to comply with these obligations, by 30 April 2020 this information should be submitted in electronic form (Article 14ca of the Act).

It is worth recalling here that pursuant to art. 153a of the Payment Services Act, failure to provide the required information to the National Bank of Poland is associated with the risk of imposing a fine of up to PLN 1,000,000.

It cannot be excluded that the NBP demonstrates some flexibility in the approach to the timeliness of submitting this information. At this time, it seems that this will not be statutory leniency, thus, in order to avoid penalties, it is better to meet the April deadline than to count on the good will of the supervisory authority.