Distance Personal Identification in the On-line Environment: Problems of Financial Institutions in the EU

Abstract

Electronic financial services are of key importance in the EU. However, the actual policies adopted in the field by individual member states differ from country to country. A great deal of legal acts have been adopted by the EU to encourage FinTech development, to prevent money laundering and in particular to lay down secure procedures of personal identification. However, measures applied by individual member states frequently differ. The purpose of this article is to focuses on actual legal instruments used by EU financial institutions and FinTech agencies in the digital environment for client identification and on major problems faced by FinTech companies rendering modern financial services. Financial institutions and FinTech agencies often face the problem of client identification which is of key importance in the field. The complex legal regulation of the field has been extended to include such concepts as customer due diligence, simplified customer due diligence, enhanced customer due diligence and customer identification in physical absence. Each of the ways of identification differs in the scope of collected personal data, methods of data collection, legal regulation and the use of technological instruments.