Size and development of the UK e-money and payment institution market
Dear Financial Conduct Authority,
I would like 2 sets of information on the size and development of the UK e-money and payment institution market if available please
1. how many UK regulated e-money institutions and payments institutions firms are there (and if possible, how has this grown over time, ideally by year for the last 10 years)
2. how many e-money customer account holders exist, and how much in £value are held in e-money (and if possible, how has this grown over time, ideally by year for the last 10 years)
Does the FCA hold this information, and can it be released to me please?
Yours faithfully,
James Smith
Thank you for e-mailing the Financial Conduct Authority's Information
Disclosure Team.
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This communication and any attachments contain information which is
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of our communications may contain confidential information which it could
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have received this email in error please notify [email address]
immediately and delete the email from your computer. Further information
on the classification and handling of FCA information can be found on the
FCA website
(http://www.fca.org.uk/site-info/legal/fc...).
The FCA (or, if this email originates from the Payment Systems Regulator
Limited, the FCA on behalf of the Payment Systems Regulator Limited / the
Payment Systems Regulator Limited) reserves the right to monitor all email
communications for compliance with legal, regulatory and professional
standards.
This email is not intended to nor should it be taken to create any legal
relations or contractual relationships. This email has originated from the
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), or the Payment Systems Regulator
Limited.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is registered as a limited company
in England and Wales No. 1920623. Registered office: 12 Endeavour Square,
Stratford, London, E20 1JN, United Kingdom
The Payment Systems Regulator Limited is registered as a limited company
in England and Wales No. 8970864. Registered office: 12 Endeavour Square,
Stratford, London, E20 1JN, United Kingdom
Switchboard 020 7066 1000
Web Site http://www.fca.org.uk (FCA); http://www.psr.org.uk (the Payment
Systems Regulator Limited)
Our Ref: FOI10122
Dear Mr Smith
Freedom of Information: Right to know request
Thank you for your email of 24 March 2023, in which you asked:
I would like 2 sets of information on the size and development of the UK
e-money and payment institution market if available please
1. how many UK regulated e-money institutions and payments institutions
firms are there (and if possible, how has this grown over time, ideally by
year for the last 10 years)
2. how many e-money customer account holders exist, and how much in £
value are held in e-money (and if possible, how has this grown over time,
ideally by year for the last 10 years)
Does the FCA hold this information, and can it be released to me please?
We have processed your email in line with the provisions of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and our response is below.
Having reviewed your request, we estimate that responding to your request
for the full 10 years, would exceed the cost limit allowed under FOIA and
therefore the exemption under section 12 (Cost of compliance exceeds
appropriate limit) applies. For more information on why this exemption
applies, please see Annex A below.
When we refuse a request because it exceeds the cost limit, it is our
policy to provide you with advice and assistance on how you can refine or
limit your request so that it is more likely to fall within the cost
limit. In this instance, we could consider a request refined as follows:
Question 1, limited to March 2023.
Question 2, limited to 2020 to 2022.
Should you wish to proceed with a refined request as set out above, please
confirm this in writing and we will process it as a new request in line
with the provisions of FOIA.
Please note that, in offering to consider such a refined request, we have
not considered whether any other exemptions apply.
Your right to complain under FOIA
If you are unhappy with this response, you have the right to request an
internal review. To do so, please contact us within 40 working days of
the date of this response at [1][email address].
If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you also
have a right of appeal to the Information Commissioner by phone or on
their website at:
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Website: [2]www.ico.org.uk
Yours sincerely
Information Disclosure Team / Operations
[3]Description: cid:image001.png@01D2A7C9.64DDD390
12 Endeavour Square
London
E20 1JN
[4]www.fca.org.uk
Follow us:
[5]Description: https://g.twimg.com/Twitter_logo_blue.pn...
image003
Please be polite to our people when requesting information, as we do not
allow abusive behaviour towards them and it may impact our ability to
communicate with you on your request; abusive language is a factor in
considering whether a request is vexatious (which can form a basis for
refusing a request). Find out [7]more.
Annex A
• Section 12 (Cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit)
FOIA requires us to comply with a request, unless it would be too
expensive to do so, as estimated in line with the Freedom of Information
and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Under these regulations, the cost limit for the FCA is £450, i.e. 18 hours
at the rate of £25 per person hour. The regulations allow us to take into
account, when estimating the cost of complying with a request, the time
spent determining whether we hold the information requested, locating and
retrieving it, and extracting the information from the relevant
document(s).
To establish all the information that falls within scope of your request
would exceed the cost limit. This is because while we hold the underlying
information you have requested it is not available in a readily
extractable format. The way the e-money institutions and payments
institutions firms were registered has changed over the 10-year period. We
would therefore need to manually review a large data set to determine the
information you are seeking.
We do not divert our resources from our regulatory functions to meet
requests under FOIA above the cost limit. While we know this may
disappoint you, we are sorry we cannot carry out an exercise to identify
the information you have requested.
This communication and any attachments may contain personal information.
For more information about how and why we use personal information and who
to contact with any queries about this, please see our privacy notices:
FCA Privacy Notice (https://www.fca.org.uk/data-protection) and PSR
Privacy Notice
(https://www.psr.org.uk/cookies-privacy-a...).
This communication and any attachments contain information which is
confidential and may be subject to legal privilege. It is for intended
recipients only. If you are not the intended recipient you must not copy,
distribute, publish, rely on or otherwise use it without our consent. Some
of our communications may contain confidential information which it could
be a criminal offence for you to disclose or use without authority. If you
have received this email in error please notify [email address]
immediately and delete the email from your computer. Further information
on the classification and handling of FCA information can be found on the
FCA website
(http://www.fca.org.uk/site-info/legal/fc...).
The FCA (or, if this email originates from the Payment Systems Regulator
Limited, the FCA on behalf of the Payment Systems Regulator Limited / the
Payment Systems Regulator Limited) reserves the right to monitor all email
communications for compliance with legal, regulatory and professional
standards.
This email is not intended to nor should it be taken to create any legal
relations or contractual relationships. This email has originated from the
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), or the Payment Systems Regulator
Limited.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is registered as a limited company
in England and Wales No. 1920623. Registered office: 12 Endeavour Square,
Stratford, London, E20 1JN, United Kingdom
The Payment Systems Regulator Limited is registered as a limited company
in England and Wales No. 8970864. Registered office: 12 Endeavour Square,
Stratford, London, E20 1JN, United Kingdom
Switchboard 020 7066 1000
Web Site http://www.fca.org.uk (FCA); http://www.psr.org.uk (the Payment
Systems Regulator Limited)
References
Visible links
1. file:///C:/Users/sali3/AppData/Roaming/OTLocal/PRODRM/Workbin/3E7676D.0/[email address]
2. http://www.ico.org.uk/
4. http://www.fca.org.uk/
5. https://twitter.com/TheFCA
6. https://www.linkedin.com/company/financi...
7. https://www.fca.org.uk/contact-us/unacce...
Dear FCA
Please process as per your proposed refined request.
Yours sincerely,
James Smith
Thank you for e-mailing the Financial Conduct Authority's Information
Disclosure Team.
This is an automatic acknowledgement to tell you that we have received
your email safely.
Please do not reply to this email.
We will be in touch in due course.
This communication and any attachments may contain personal information.
For more information about how and why we use personal information and who
to contact with any queries about this, please see our privacy notices:
FCA Privacy Notice (https://www.fca.org.uk/data-protection) and PSR
Privacy Notice
(https://www.psr.org.uk/cookies-privacy-a...).
This communication and any attachments contain information which is
confidential and may be subject to legal privilege. It is for intended
recipients only. If you are not the intended recipient you must not copy,
distribute, publish, rely on or otherwise use it without our consent. Some
of our communications may contain confidential information which it could
be a criminal offence for you to disclose or use without authority. If you
have received this email in error please notify [email address]
immediately and delete the email from your computer. Further information
on the classification and handling of FCA information can be found on the
FCA website
(http://www.fca.org.uk/site-info/legal/fc...).
The FCA (or, if this email originates from the Payment Systems Regulator
Limited, the FCA on behalf of the Payment Systems Regulator Limited / the
Payment Systems Regulator Limited) reserves the right to monitor all email
communications for compliance with legal, regulatory and professional
standards.
This email is not intended to nor should it be taken to create any legal
relations or contractual relationships. This email has originated from the
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), or the Payment Systems Regulator
Limited.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is registered as a limited company
in England and Wales No. 1920623. Registered office: 12 Endeavour Square,
Stratford, London, E20 1JN, United Kingdom
The Payment Systems Regulator Limited is registered as a limited company
in England and Wales No. 8970864. Registered office: 12 Endeavour Square,
Stratford, London, E20 1JN, United Kingdom
Switchboard 020 7066 1000
Web Site http://www.fca.org.uk (FCA); http://www.psr.org.uk (the Payment
Systems Regulator Limited)
Our Ref: FOI10180
Dear Mr Smith
Freedom of Information: Right to know request
Thank you for your email of 24 April 2023, in which you asked for:
1. how many UK regulated e-money institutions and payments institutions
firms are there (limited to March 2023)
2. how many e-money customer account holders exist, and how much in
£value are held in e-money (and if possible, how has this grown over
time, limited to 2020 to 2022)
We have processed your email in line with the provisions of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and our response is below.
Before responding to your request, we would like to explain that the data
provided is in respect of FCA solo-regulated firms in the payments and
e-money portfolio that are either authorised e-money institutions, small
e-money institutions, authorised payment institutions, small payment
institutions or registered account information providers.
Question 1
There are 254 UK regulated e-money institutions, 944 UK regulated payment
institutions and 94 registered account information providers as of 30
March 2023.
Please note that the licenses, registrations, and authorisations that
individual firms hold are a matter of public record and can be checked via
the FCA Register on a case-by-case basis. Useful downloads for payments
and e-money firms can be found here:
[1]https://register.fca.org.uk/s/resources#...
Question 2
We collect the data on the value of e-money accounts in euros and have
used an exchange rate of 1.15 to convert this into pounds.
┌────┬───────────────┬───────────────────┬───────────┬───────────────────┐
│Year│Number of │Value of e-money │Exchange │Value of e-money │
│ │e-money │accounts (€) │Rate │accounts (£) │
│ │accounts │ │ │ │
├────┼───────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────┼───────────────────┤
│2020│ 36,349,351 │ 6,416,562,249 │ 1.15 │ 5,579,619,347 │
├────┼───────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────┼───────────────────┤
│2021│ 62,187,891 │ 12,716,387,395 │ 1.15 │ 11,057,728,170 │
├────┼───────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────┼───────────────────┤
│2022│ 75,681,972 │ 18,687,912,209 │ 1.15 │ 16,250,358,443 │
└────┴───────────────┴───────────────────┴───────────┴───────────────────┘
Your right to complain under FOIA
If you are unhappy with this response, you have the right to request an
internal review. To do so, please contact us within 40 working days of
the date of this response at [2][email address].
If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you also
have a right of appeal to the Information Commissioner by phone or on
their website at:
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Website: [3]www.ico.org.uk
Yours sincerely
Information Disclosure Team / Operations
[4]Description: cid:image001.png@01D2A7C9.64DDD390
12 Endeavour Square
London
E20 1JN
[5]www.fca.org.uk
Follow us:
[6]Description: https://g.twimg.com/Twitter_logo_blue.pn...
image003
Please be polite to our people when requesting information, as we do not
allow abusive behaviour towards them and it may impact our ability to
communicate with you on your request; abusive language is a factor in
considering whether a request is vexatious (which can form a basis for
refusing a request). Find out [8]more.
This communication and any attachments may contain personal information.
For more information about how and why we use personal information and who
to contact with any queries about this, please see our privacy notices:
FCA Privacy Notice (https://www.fca.org.uk/data-protection) and PSR
Privacy Notice
(https://www.psr.org.uk/cookies-privacy-a...).
This communication and any attachments contain information which is
confidential and may be subject to legal privilege. It is for intended
recipients only. If you are not the intended recipient you must not copy,
distribute, publish, rely on or otherwise use it without our consent. Some
of our communications may contain confidential information which it could
be a criminal offence for you to disclose or use without authority. If you
have received this email in error please notify [email address]
immediately and delete the email from your computer. Further information
on the classification and handling of FCA information can be found on the
FCA website
(http://www.fca.org.uk/site-info/legal/fc...).
The FCA (or, if this email originates from the Payment Systems Regulator
Limited, the FCA on behalf of the Payment Systems Regulator Limited / the
Payment Systems Regulator Limited) reserves the right to monitor all email
communications for compliance with legal, regulatory and professional
standards.
This email is not intended to nor should it be taken to create any legal
relations or contractual relationships. This email has originated from the
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), or the Payment Systems Regulator
Limited.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is registered as a limited company
in England and Wales No. 1920623. Registered office: 12 Endeavour Square,
Stratford, London, E20 1JN, United Kingdom
The Payment Systems Regulator Limited is registered as a limited company
in England and Wales No. 8970864. Registered office: 12 Endeavour Square,
Stratford, London, E20 1JN, United Kingdom
Switchboard 020 7066 1000
Web Site http://www.fca.org.uk (FCA); http://www.psr.org.uk (the Payment
Systems Regulator Limited)
References
Visible links
1. https://register.fca.org.uk/s/resources#...
2. file:///C:/Users/sali3/AppData/Roaming/OTLocal/PRODRM/Workbin/3E7676D.0/[email address]
3. http://www.ico.org.uk/
5. http://www.fca.org.uk/
6. https://twitter.com/TheFCA
7. https://www.linkedin.com/company/financi...
8. https://www.fca.org.uk/contact-us/unacce...
Dear FCA
Thank you for your response Ref: FOI10180
With regards to your response to Q2 - can you confirm the statistics provided pertain to either
a) accounts and balances at e-money institutions regulated by the FCA
b) accounts and balances belonging to UK persons
c) some other definition?
Yours sincerely,
James Smith
Thank you for e-mailing the Financial Conduct Authority's Information
Disclosure Team.
This is an automatic acknowledgement to tell you that we have received
your email safely.
Please do not reply to this email.
We will be in touch in due course.
This communication and any attachments may contain personal information.
For more information about how and why we use personal information and who
to contact with any queries about this, please see our privacy notices:
FCA Privacy Notice (https://www.fca.org.uk/data-protection) and PSR
Privacy Notice
(https://www.psr.org.uk/cookies-privacy-a...).
This communication and any attachments contain information which is
confidential and may be subject to legal privilege. It is for intended
recipients only. If you are not the intended recipient you must not copy,
distribute, publish, rely on or otherwise use it without our consent. Some
of our communications may contain confidential information which it could
be a criminal offence for you to disclose or use without authority. If you
have received this email in error please notify [email address]
immediately and delete the email from your computer. Further information
on the classification and handling of FCA information can be found on the
FCA website
(http://www.fca.org.uk/site-info/legal/fc...).
The FCA (or, if this email originates from the Payment Systems Regulator
Limited, the FCA on behalf of the Payment Systems Regulator Limited / the
Payment Systems Regulator Limited) reserves the right to monitor all email
communications for compliance with legal, regulatory and professional
standards.
This email is not intended to nor should it be taken to create any legal
relations or contractual relationships. This email has originated from the
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), or the Payment Systems Regulator
Limited.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is registered as a limited company
in England and Wales No. 1920623. Registered office: 12 Endeavour Square,
Stratford, London, E20 1JN, United Kingdom
The Payment Systems Regulator Limited is registered as a limited company
in England and Wales No. 8970864. Registered office: 12 Endeavour Square,
Stratford, London, E20 1JN, United Kingdom
Switchboard 020 7066 1000
Web Site http://www.fca.org.uk (FCA); http://www.psr.org.uk (the Payment
Systems Regulator Limited)
Dear Mr Smith
Thank you for your below email. We have reached out to the relative
business area and they have confirmed that the statistics provided relate
to accounts and balances at e-money institutions regulated by the FCA.
Yours sincerely
Information Disclosure Team / Operations
[1]Description: cid:image001.png@01D2A7C9.64DDD390
12 Endeavour Square
London
E20 1JN
[2]www.fca.org.uk
Follow us:
[3]Description: https://g.twimg.com/Twitter_logo_blue.pn...
image003
Please be polite to our people when requesting information, as we do not
allow abusive behaviour towards them and it may impact our ability to
communicate with you on your request; abusive language is a factor in
considering whether a request is vexatious (which can form a basis for
refusing a request). Find out [5]more.
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