Payments Council

Seeking to strengthen dialogue among payment service providers, payment service users, regulators and the academia in order to develop Lithuania’s payments market, the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Lithuania established an organised and independent forum – the Payments Council. The idea for creating the Payments Council was first put forward at the end of 2016 during the public consultation on the National Payments Strategy. The suggestion was supported by an absolute majority of the respondents to the consultation.

The Payments Council was created drawing on the best practices of other countries – it consists of

• Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Lithuania;
• Ministry of Economy and Innovation of the Republic of Lithuania;
• Bank of Lithuania;
• Association of Lithuanian Banks;
• Association of Payment and Electronic Money Institutions;
• Electronic Money Association;
• Fintech Lithuania group;
• FINTECH HUB LT Association;
• Alliance of Lithuanian Consumer Organisations;
• Council of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises;
• Association of Lithuanian Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Crafts;
• Vytautas Magnus University;
• Mykolas Romeris University;
• Vilnius University;
• Kaunas University of Technology.

The Payments Council may freely determine its key priorities, prepare its action plans and take a position. The decisions of the Payments Council are publicly available.

The Payments Council in Lithuania has enabled payments market participants to share their views and cooperate in finding solutions to create an efficient payments market that would justify the expectations of the public and businesses as well as allow payment service providers to successfully operate and compete. In a coordinated manner, the members of the Payments Council assess directions for the development of Lithuania’s payments market, problematic aspects, monitor how payments policy measures are being implemented and how innovations emerging in the market are applied. The Payments Council may submit proposals to market participants and state institutions with regard to possible solutions for the problematic aspects of the payments market, implementation of policy measures and development of directions, as well formulate the common position of Lithuania’s payments market participants for EU-wide initiatives and present it to relevant EU institutions.

In 2018 the Payments Council analysed three priority issues and prepared the following recommendations for payment market participants, payment policymakers and policy implementing institutions:

1. Integration of instant payments in business and public administration processes (feasibility study)
2. Opportunities for optimising know your customer (KYC) process (feasibility study)
3. Analysis of opportunities for new identification means and their compliance with anti-money laundering (feasibility study)

In 2019-2020 the Payments Council analysed:

1. Creation of measures fostering open ecosystem for non-cash payments in education institutions
2. Development of Open Banking

The Payments Council’s rights and obligations, work organisation and publication procedures and positions are set out in the Payments Council Regulations. Feel free to contact the Payments Council by email at [email protected].