2012-03-06
The Board of the Bank of Lithuania decided to issue another two payment institution licenses. So far a total of 13 undertakings have been issued licenses for provision of payment services.
UAB "Virtualių paslaugų operatorius" (Vilnius) will receive a payment institution license allowing "money remittances", a payment service established in Article 5(6) of the Law on Payments of the Republic of Lithuania . UAB "Omnitel" will receive a payment institution license for restricted activities, which allows providing services ("execution of payment transactions where the consent of the payer to execute a payment transaction is given by means of any telecommunication, digital or IT device and the payment is made to the telecommunication, IT system or network operator, acting only as an intermediary between the payment service user and the supplier of the goods or services") specified in Article 5(7) of the Law on Payments.
UAB "Virtualių paslaugų operatorius" provides payment (money remittances) service via two intermediaries, namely UAB "Lietuvos spaudos Vilniaus agentūra" and UAB "Vaskota". At the present time, fees from natural and legal entities are collected at retail outlets owned by UAB "Lietuvos spauda Vilniaus agentūra" (by 274 kiosks and 29 outlets of R-Kiosk retail network in Lithuania’s major cities, as well as 30 newspaper kiosks which belong to UAB "Vaskota"). As informed by UAB "Virtualių paslaugų operatorius", upon the receipt of the payment institution license it would provide the said service via two intermediaries specified above after they are included into the public list of payment institutions, while later on the service would be provided directly.
When providing the payment service, UAB "Omnitel" will act in the payment service market as an intermediary that offers its customers a possibility to order certain services available from service providers and give their agreement to execute a payment transaction by dialing a short number, sending a SMS text message to that number or connecting to it via an online browser on their mobile phone. According to UAB "Omnitel", 65,000 of its customers use the payment service it offers. They can pay via UAB "Omnitel" for services received from 18 various service providers.