Digital Payments & Fintech - Austria

The FMA grants licences to payment institutions, payment initiation service providers and e-money institutions; the three pivotal supervisory laws are ZaDiG 2018, the E-Money Act 2010 (E-Geldgesetz 2010) and the Banking Act (BWG).

Open banking is based on PSD2, transposed into Austrian law by ZaDiG 2018; third-party providers must be registered or licensed at the FMA as account information service providers (AISPs) or payment initiation service providers (PISPs).

EU Regulation (EU) 2024/886 makes euro instant credit transfers mandatory: PSPs had to be able to receive instant payments from 9 January 2025 and to send them plus run Verification of Payee (IBAN-name check) from 9 October 2025, with no higher fees than standard transfers. The FMA is the competent authority; PSPs report annually to the OeNB.

Under the EU MiCA Regulation (in force 30 December 2024), crypto-asset service providers must obtain FMA authorisation; the transitional period for existing CASPs ran until 31 December 2025. The FMA has issued MiCA licences to firms such as Bybit and AMINA in 2025.

Buy-now-pay-later and short-term/low-value consumer credit become regulated consumer credit under the EU Second Consumer Credit Directive (CCD2, Directive 2023/2225); member states including Austria must apply the stricter rules from 20 November 2026, bringing previously unregulated 'pay-in-X' models under full consumer-protection standards.

The FMA runs a FinTech Point of Contact and a FinTech Navigator for licensing/AML guidance, plus a regulatory Sandbox (open since 1 September 2020) where a dedicated FMA supervisory team agrees test parameters and milestones to ease the path to authorisation.