Osborne Clarke advises Token Group on BaFin licence

Osborne Clarke completed Token Group’ licence application procedure with the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht – BaFin) for a licence as the provider of payment initiation services (PIS) and account information services (AIS). Token Group, which already holds a licence in the UK, is now permitted to offer its services all across the EU and EEA.

Token is a London, Berlin, and San Francisco-based payment services provider which was founded 2016. It offers PIS (payment services like Sofort, Klarna or giropay) and AIS (as, e.g., used in multi-banking apps to show several bank accounts) to B2B customers. Token provides (online-)merchants and other payment services providers like banks with PIS and AIS via its own software (Software-as-a-service). Services may be implemented in Token’s customers’ platforms in order to provide their customers with new Account-to-Account payment propositions. Token has onboarded approx. 3.000 banks to its software and operates in 29 countries. Customers of Token include: BNPP, HSBC, Safecharge, Straal, Rewire, Contis, and OpenPayd.

Osborne Clarke’s team consisted of Tanja Aschenbeck (lead), Thorge Drefke and Jan Herrmann (all investment and capital markets law); Dr. Marc Störing and Neil Weaver (both IT / data protection) as well as Felix Hilgert (consumer protection) (all Cologne).