The Payment Services and Payment Accounts (Contract Termination) (Amendment) Regulations 2025 come into force on 28 April 2026, applying to framework contracts for payment services entered into on or after that date. Critically for merchants, these regulations extend beyond consumer banking to cover merchant acquiring services, e-money accounts, and all payment acceptance contracts with indefinite duration. 

Your PSPs and acquiring banks must give 90 days’ notice before terminating your merchant account—increased from two months—and provide sufficiently detailed explanations enabling you to understand termination reasons. This extended notice period provides crucial time to secure alternative payment acceptance arrangements before losing processing capability. However, the regulations only protect merchants classified as micro-enterprises (those with fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet of under €2 million). Larger merchants may be excluded from these protections if PSPs exercise their right to disapply provisions for non-micro-enterprises. 

The requirement for “sufficiently detailed and specific explanations” represents a significant shift for merchants who have historically received termination notices citing “commercial reasons” or “risk appetite changes.” PSPs must now provide substantive reasoning, though exceptions exist where providing explanations might prejudice financial crime investigations or constitute “tipping off” under money laundering regulations. PSPs face implementation challenges, including whether to repaper existing contracts or maintain dual frameworks for pre- and post-April 2026 agreements, which could create potential inconsistencies in how different merchant cohorts are treated.