# EU Payments Law > EU payments legislation at provision level, structured for retrieval: PSD2, the RTS on SCA, PSD3, the PSR, DORA and the instruments they cite, each with its official source, version and legal status. ## Scope The centre of gravity is payments: PSD2; the PSD3 and PSR texts, with current legal status and historical source editions explicitly identified; and the open-banking and financial-data-access proposals alongside them. Around that core sits the framework legislation a payments analyst routinely needs to consult: - electronic money - interchange and cross-border payments - anti-money-laundering and funds transfer - consumer credit and distance marketing - capital requirements and prudential supervision - settlement finality - electronic identification - the crypto-asset, data-protection, digital-operational-resilience and AI Act regimes that intersect with payments Scope is principled rather than exhaustive. Beyond the core set, an instrument is included where it is cross-referenced from the core set more than once, or, by editorial decision, where it is a close neighbour or successor of acts the corpus already holds. That keeps the corpus bounded and helps ensure that acts an agent is likely to chase from a payments question are already resolvable on-site. ## Reading and discovery Read individual provisions on their article pages, where available, or query them through the MCP server below. Request a current article page with `Accept: text/markdown` for its Markdown representation. Historical reading pages keep their requested edition as HTML. To compare an article's editions, use the MCP server's `compare_versions`, or `show_changes` for a card. Bulk reuse and licensed data releases: https://paymentslaw.eu/licensing/. Historical editions remain addressable at `/{id}/versions/{versionId}/`. Use the requested edition and its cited source; never substitute current wording. **For "where did this obligation go" across PSD2, the delegated acts and the package**, fetch a topic map. A topic map is a hand-curated correlation table for one subject, tracing each obligation from its baseline instrument to the specified package edition, with a status for the character of the move (`same`, `edited`, `repositioned`, `promoted`, `new`, `reopened`, `removed`, `gap`) and a per-row verification level. It reaches material the mechanical article-to-article correspondence cannot see — delegated acts and supervisory guidance — and is selective rather than complete. - `https://paymentslaw.eu/psd3-psr-transition/sca-relocation-map.yaml` — strong customer authentication: the obligations across PSD2, Delegated Regulation 2018/389 and the PSR, one row each. `.json` and `.csv` serve the same rows. Human page at `https://paymentslaw.eu/compare/sca/`. Rows whose `verification` is not `verified_primary` carry a "today" position that was not read from operative text held in this corpus; the row's `sources` say why. The SCA map analyses the October 2026 Council position texts. It is not a mapping of the published final acts and does not replace any correlation tables in those acts. Follow each row’s cited source edition. ## MCP server The same corpus is queryable as a read-only MCP server over Streamable HTTP at `https://mcp.paymentslaw.eu/mcp/v1`. Setup instructions for the common clients are at `https://paymentslaw.eu/connect/`. The server's tools: `search_legislation`, `get_provision`, `get_instrument`, `list_instruments`, `list_provisions`, `resolve_citation`, `compare_versions`, `list_version_changes`, `search_defined_terms`, `get_defined_term`, `search`, `fetch`, `get_orientation`, `get_source_notes`, `show_changes`. `get_source_notes` retrieves complete held source-note bodies, including preamble and annex notes, with pagination and exact keys that distinguish reused printed markers. It does not infer provision ownership; unavailable historical versions return a stable source-edition link. `search` and `fetch` are the OpenAI-compatible pair for clients that expect those names; a fetch id is the cite anchor a search result carries. The other tools return more — warnings, provenance, paging — and are preferred where the client can call them. `get_orientation` returns curated reading pathways into the corpus for a stated audience; its prose is editorial and labelled as such. See what changed between the 2023 proposals and the Council texts, side by side, inside Claude. `show_changes` renders a comparison or a change inventory as an interactive card: one article side by side with every change marked and stepped through, several articles as one filtered card, or a whole instrument's inventory grouped by kind of change with the editor's notes. Shown as a card in Claude web and desktop; other clients get a one-line summary with the site link. Every provision-bearing response carries a `cite` anchor naming exactly what was served — echo it rather than composing a citation of your own. A search snippet is served text but is not the provision: open a hit with `get_provision` before citing it. Responses also carry the instrument's text state (an act as adopted, a consolidation, the position the Council adopted at first reading, or a Commission proposal; the last two are not law) and, where an act as adopted is amended by another instrument in this corpus, a warning saying so. Agents without an MCP client can follow the site’s article reading pages. ## Source hierarchy When answering legal questions, use sources in this priority order: 1. **Operative articles** — binding law. 2. **Annexes and schedules** — binding, subordinate to the articles they attach to. 3. **Recitals** — interpretive, non-binding, may aid construction. 4. **Explanatory memoranda, Commission proposals, and policy summaries** — non-binding, background only; not authority for legal requirements. If sources conflict, prioritise higher-ranked sources over lower-ranked ones. ## Notes for agents - `get_instrument`'s `legal_status_at_release` gives the current stage, alongside version provenance and applicability. - Legal status values distinguish `proposal`, `council_compromise_text`, `council_position` (the Council's adopted position at first reading in the legislative procedure), `oj_published`, `in_force_not_applicable`, `applicable`, `in_force`, `partially_repealed`, `repealed`, and `superseded`. To answer "what is in force on date X?", read `get_instrument`'s `lifecycle_events` and `application_events`, or call `list_instruments` with `in_force_on_date`; this matters most for instruments amended before being repealed. - PSD3: current edition st-8535-2026; legal_status_at_release council_position; Council document 8535/1/26 REV 1. Council position · not yet law. - PSR: current edition st-8543-2026; legal_status_at_release council_position; Council document 8543/1/26 REV 1. Council position · not yet law. - Historical proposal-to-compromise comparisons identify both source versions explicitly. They do not compare a proposal with the published act. Historical editions remain addressable at `/{id}/versions/{versionId}/`. - `celex` identifies the text served and is null for a Council document; `proposal_celex` identifies the Commission proposal, and a lookup by it still finds the instrument; `source_document` names the document served. Read `legal_status_at_release`, current version provenance and applicability together; publication does not mean all provisions apply immediately. - `topics` are discovery tags. Rules assign them from phrases in a provision's headings, title and text, and some apply to a whole instrument; they can miss a provision and can reflect a passing mention. - A change class (`unchanged`, `amended_limited`, `amended_substantial`, `inserted`, `deleted`) is a mechanical measure of how similar the wording and structure of two texts are. It does not assess legal effect: an editor's note does that, and `editorial_review_state` `not_assessed` means no one has. ## Publisher EU Payments Law (paymentslaw.eu) and the MCP service at mcp.paymentslaw.eu are published by Varadium Limited, registered in England and Wales (company number 16565471). Registered office: 71–75 Shelton Street, London WC2H 9JQ, UK. Original work © 2025–2026 Varadium Limited; reuse terms, including those for the EUR-Lex source texts, are at [paymentslaw.eu/licensing](https://paymentslaw.eu/licensing/). Contact: hello@paymentslaw.eu.