The End of Silos: Payment Services Regulation in the EU and Linkages with the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR)

The paper examines one aspect of the interaction between the EU’s payment and crypto-asset services regulatory regimes. It finds that a de lege lata (positive law) analysis, based on a literal/textual and systematic interpretation, is inconclusive. Thus, it proceeds to a contextual-teleological analysis and sketches elements to be taken into account in a de lege ferenda (normative law) exploration of the subject. It examines, albeit briefly, the historical evolution of the nature of money, in general, and payments as a debt transfer mechanism, in particular; and it explores how the atomic settlement enabled by the blockchain has been affecting the regulation of money and payments- conceptually and in the particular EU context. It concludes that, in light of the ensuing ‘end of silos’, the EU with its specific institutional architecture, relying on the European Supervisory Authorities, augurs well for a balanced regulatory responses, anchored in practical supervisory experience.