Clifford Chance

Welcome to this week's global fintech round-up, summarising fintech regulatory developments that have happened around the world along with our Clifford Chance fintech publications and upcoming events.

Details of these and previous developments can also be found on our Fintech Topic Guide on the Clifford Chance Financial Markets Toolkit.

SPOTLIGHT: Clifford Chance and GBBC present: the Future of Digital Finance – 1 October 2024

GLOBAL LEGAL AND REGULATORY UPDATES, INDUSTRY GUIDANCE AND PUBLICATIONS

International

• (28 Aug 2024) Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) working paper on novel risks, mitigants and uncertainties with permissionless distributed ledger technologies. The paper considers risks related to operations and security, governance, legal, compliance (including money laundering/financing of terrorism) and settlement finality. | Webpage

APAC

Hong Kong:

• (28 Aug 2024) The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has launched its Project Ensemble Sandbox, which is designed to facilitate interbank settlement using experimental tokenised money, focusing on transactions involving tokenised assets, and introduced four main themes of asset tokenisation use cases for the initial round of experimentation. | Press release

Europe

EU:

• (30 Aug 2024) European Central Bank (ECB) opinion on the proposed regulation on a framework for financial data access (FiDA). The EU Commission proposed the FiDA package in June 2023. The framework is intended to establish clear rights and obligations to manage customer data sharing in the financial sector beyond payment accounts.

 UK:

• (4 Sep 2024) Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) consultation on changing the maximum level of reimbursement for the Faster Payments APP scams reimbursement requirement for the 7 October 2024 policy start date. The PSR is proposing to implement the policy with an initial maximum level of reimbursement set at the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) reimbursement limit, which is currently £85,000 per Faster Payments APP scam claim. Deadline for comments: 18 September 2024. | Press release

Middle East

Qatar:

• (1 Sep 2024) The Qatar Financial Centre Authority (QFCA) and Qatar Financial Centre Regulatory Authority (QFCRA) have launched the QFC Digital Assets Framework 2024, which establishes the legal and regulatory foundation for digital assets, including the process of tokenisation, legal recognition of property rights in tokens and their underlying assets, custody arrangements, transfer, and exchange. The framework also provides for the legal recognition of smart contracts. | Press release

EVENTS

• CryptoUK Autumn Networking hosted by Clifford Chance (London, 19 September 2024). The event will feature a panel session titled "A New Era? Exploring the Labour Government’s Influence on Digital Assets Growth, Adoption, and Regulation", with industry experts from Elliptic, Gemini, KR1 and Clifford Chance sharing invaluable perspectives on the current and future state of digital assets in the UK. | Places are limited, please register your interest here.
• Save the date: The Future of Digital Finance 2024 (Hybrid – London/online, 1 October 2024): Join Clifford Chance and GBBC to network, discuss, and hear from those shaping the future of digital finance. We will be joined by a diverse line up of international regulators and industry leaders to navigate topics including the evolving global regulatory landscape for digital assets, MiCA three months on, interoperability, tokenization of funds and assets and the UK's evolving digital ambitions. Attend in person in London or tune in via our global live stream.  | To register, please see the event registration form
• Global Financial Markets Perspectives Series: Financing digital infrastructure – data centre ABS and funding trends for data centres and digital infrastructure (online, 15 October 2024): With the rise of AI, demand for data continues to grow exponentially raising questions as to how the rapid roll-out and development of data centres will be financed over the next five to 10 years. Our European lawyers across infrastructure finance, project finance, real estate finance and asset backed finance will discuss the innovative financing structures we see for data centres including Europe’s first public data centre ABS and share views on financing trends in the digital infrastructure sector. | To register, please see the event series registration form