Oversight functions

Regulation

One of the Division’s key roles is regulation.

Regulation is applied in terms of the stability and efficiency of controlled payment systems and includes, among other things, promoting and stewarding legislative proceedings, laying down principles and standards for system activity in various fields, testing, adopting, and adjusting international standards, presenting payment systems with oversight directives, regulating existing and new means of payment in the market by regulating the schemes that determine their rules of use, regulating new areas of activity and technologies in the payment market, promoting regulatory measures in regard to structural changes in the payments market, mapping the market’s payment systems on a regular basis, and declaring critical payment systems as controlled or designated-controlled.

Assessment and Audit 

The Division’s Assessment and Audit Unit evaluates and audits the stability, efficiency, and sound functioning of every controlled payment system and the payments array at large.

The Unit’s duties include, among others, regular monitoring of payment systems’ activity, evaluating payment-system compliance with the PFMI principles, the provisions of the law, and the Division’s directives; detecting and evaluating risks to the payment system and taking measures to mitigate them; promoting measures meant to respond to issues associated with the stability, efficiency, and sound functioning of controlled payment systems; dealing with transient issues that are detected in ongoing oversight of the systems; auditing controlled payment systems; and enforcement.

The Evaluation and Auditing Unit also is tasked with the areas of corporate governance, management of operational risk including business continuity, information security, and cyber defense, and it carries out all of the Division’s duties in these respects.

strategy 

In an additional role, the Payment Systems Oversight Division establishes and promotes strategy for Israel’s payments market, development of the payments market, and management of foreign relations in association with this, in accordance with Responsibility 5 of the PFMI. This role includes, inter alia, initiating strategic projects in the field of payments, acting to apply reforms and changes in the payments array and means of payment in order to promote innovation and responsiveness to the market’s needs, promoting efficient cross-border payments, managing relations with the government for the advancement of efficient and innovative government payments, coordinating access to payment systems, managing relations with potential players in the field of payments, stewarding players in the process of gaining access, and managing platforms for discourse and consultation with regulators and players in Israel’s payments market.