ACPR · France

REGAFI: reading France’s register of financial agents

Fintech Passport

October 24, 2026 · 11-min read

REGAFI: reading France’s register of financial agents

REGAFI, the Registre des agents financiers kept by the ACPR at regafi.fr, is the first place to check who may provide banking, payment and e-money services in France, and on whose behalf. For a payment or e-money institution, REGAFI is a working tool: it shows your own authorisation as the market sees it, every agent you have registered, the EEA firms passporting into France, and the counterparties you are about to onboard. This article is about using the register, not about obtaining a licence.

1. What REGAFI is now

REGAFI is the public register of firms authorised under the Code monétaire et financier (CMF) to carry on banking, financial, payment or electronic money activities in France. It is maintained by the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR), the supervisor attached to the Banque de France.

On 1 July 2026 the ACPR relaunched regafi.fr as a single public register for banking and insurance, merging the former banking register with REFASSU, its insurance register. The ACPR describes the new register as updated daily and centralising, in one place, each firm’s identification details and the scope of its authorisation. It also publishes APIs so that firms can pull the data into their own tools instead of searching by hand.

REGAFI does not grant anything: the ACPR decision or registration does. Treat the entry as public evidence of a status, not the status itself.

2. What the banking side lists

The banking side of REGAFI covers far more than banks. The categories you will meet most often as a payment or e-money institution are:

Établissement de crédit — credit institutions.
Établissement de paiement and Établissement de monnaie électronique — payment and e-money institutions, including those operating under a limited-scope regime.
Prestataire de services d’informations sur les comptes (PSIC) — registered account information service providers.
Agent PSP — agents of payment service providers. By number of entries this is by far the largest category: the open dataset held close to 30,000 agent mandates in October 2026, against a few hundred payment and e-money institutions.
Entreprise d’investissement, société de financement, changeur manuel, credit managers, holding companies and representative offices.
EEA firms passporting into France, recorded as libre prestation de services (freedom to provide services, LPS) or as a passported branch under libre établissement (freedom of establishment, LE).

Alongside the register, the ACPR publishes separate lists on its website: authorisations and withdrawals, firms identified by several interbank codes, and EEA firms that have appointed a French tied agent under the investment-services passport.

3. How to read an entry

Each field of an entry answers a different due diligence question.

Identifiant REGAFI — the register’s own reference for the entity. The ACPR uses it in its own notes on entries, so quote it in correspondence.
CIB — the code interbancaire, the five-digit interbank code given to French-authorised institutions. Some firms hold several after mergers; the ACPR lists those separately. EEA firms operating under LPS generally have none.
SIREN and LEI — the French company number and the Legal Entity Identifier. Match these, not the name, against your onboarding file.
Catégorie and nature of authorisation — for example agrément, exemption d’agrément or enregistrement. An exempted payment institution and a fully authorised one are not interchangeable counterparties.
Type of entity — legal person, natural person, passported branch, or LPS.
Supervisory authority — for an EEA firm, the country and name of the home supervisor. That tells you whose register is authoritative.
Services — the payment services authorised, coded by the numbering of Article L. 314-1, II CMF, with the start date of each. Check the service you are buying is actually on the list.
Événements — a free-text field where the ACPR records mergers, CIB transfers, exemptions and restrictions attached to an authorisation. Always read it.

The register also distinguishes an active authorisation from an agent mandate. Withdrawn authorisations are published in the ACPR’s list of authorisations and withdrawals, so a firm that no longer appears needs a check there before you conclude anything.

4. How agents and distributors reach REGAFI

For a French payment service provider, an agent reaches the register through its principal. Under Article L. 523-1 CMF a payment service provider may use one or more agents to provide payment services on its behalf, within the limits of its own authorisation. The ACPR’s FAQ on agents makes the mechanics plain:

the principal, not the agent, files the declaration, through the ACPR portal, using the agent file annexed to Instruction 2019-I-22 for payment institutions (Instruction 2013-I-09 for e-money institutions);
the ACPR may refuse to register an agent if the information supplied is not satisfactory;
the agent must not carry out any operation until its registration has been entered in REGAFI;
the principal remains fully responsible for the agent’s acts under Article L. 523-3 CMF, and the agent must disclose to the public that it acts as a mandatary.

E-money distributors are different. Articles L. 525-8 and following CMF let an e-money institution distribute and redeem e-money through mandated persons, and the issuer stays responsible to holders. The ACPR states that distributors mandated in France by a French-authorised issuer are not registered with it, unlike agents. A distributor’s absence from REGAFI is therefore expected, not a red flag. Distributors operating in another member state from the issuer are covered by a passport notification instead.

5. EEA firms passporting into France

An EEA payment or e-money institution serving French customers appears in REGAFI as an inbound passport: LPS where it provides services cross-border, or a passported branch where it has established itself in France. The entry names its home supervisor. The ACPR records what the home authority notifies; it does not authorise the firm.

For these firms the ACPR’s own advice is to consult the register of the home country authority. That matters most for agents. Under Article 28 of PSD2 (Directive (EU) 2015/2366), an institution that wants to use an agent in another member state notifies its home authority, which passes the notification to the host authority; the agent is then entered in the home authority’s register. In REGAFI’s current open data, the PSP-agent mandates are those granted by French-registered principals, including French firms’ agents operating elsewhere in the EEA. An EEA firm’s agent in France should be verified on the home register and the EBA register, not in REGAFI.

6. REGAFI, the EBA register and ORIAS

Three registers are routinely confused.

Register	Kept by	Who is in it	Use it to
REGAFI (regafi.fr)	ACPR	Firms authorised for banking, payment, e-money and related activities in France; agents of French principals; EEA firms passporting in; insurers on the insurance side	Verify a French firm’s authorisation, services and agents; see which EEA firms are notified into France
EBA payment institutions register	EBA, from national authorities’ data	Payment and e-money institutions, their agents and EEA branches, account information service providers, exempted institutions	Cross-check any EEA firm, including its agents abroad
ORIAS register	ORIAS, under the supervision of the Direction générale du Trésor	Intermediaries: insurance intermediaries, intermediaries in banking operations and payment services (IOBSP), financial investment advisers and others	Verify someone who presents or proposes banking or payment products without providing them

The EBA states that its register has no legal significance: national authorities supply the data, are responsible for its accuracy, and update it at least daily. If REGAFI and the EBA register disagree on a French firm, REGAFI is the national record. An IOBSP registered with ORIAS under Articles L. 519-1 and L. 546-1 CMF introduces clients to a provider; a PSP agent in REGAFI provides the service itself on the principal’s behalf. Do not accept one as evidence of the other.

7. Using REGAFI for counterparty due diligence

REGAFI is a primary source for verifying a payment service provider, a partner bank or a programme manager’s licensed entity. A sound check runs in this order:

Search by SIREN or LEI, then confirm the name, trade names and address match. The ACPR itself warns that fraudsters impersonate authorised firms and tells the public to check that those details match exactly.
Confirm the category and nature of authorisation fit the relationship.
Check the specific payment services and their start dates against what you are contracting for.
Read the événements field for restrictions, mergers and exemptions.
For an EEA firm, note the home supervisor and verify on that register and the EBA register.
For an agent, confirm the principal, the services mandated and the country of the mandate.
Save the entry, or the API response, with the date of the check in the due diligence file, and repeat it at each periodic review.

8. When an entry is wrong

REGAFI reflects what was filed with, or notified to, the ACPR. A wrong entry is usually a filing problem, and the fix follows the filing route.

Your own authorisation. Raise it with the ACPR through the portal used for authorisation matters, or your usual ACPR contact, with the REGAFI identifier and the decision you rely on.
Your agents. Mandates, services and terminations are declared by you as principal, so a stale or missing agent is corrected by a new declaration from you, not by the agent.
An EEA passport. The data comes from the home authority’s notification. Correct it at home; the French entry and the EBA register will follow.

The ACPR does not publish a dedicated correction form or turnaround time for register errors, so keep a record of the request and recheck the entry until it changes.

9. Worked cases

An EEA EMI as a new partner

Facts: a French payment institution plans to settle card-acquiring funds through an e-money institution authorised in another member state, which says it is “authorised in France”.

What the rule says: an EEA firm serves French customers under its home authorisation and a passport notification. REGAFI records the notification and names the home supervisor; the ACPR tells users to check the home register.

What the practitioner does: finds the LPS entry in REGAFI by LEI, notes the home authority and the services listed, then confirms the authorisation and services on the home register and the EBA register. Records all three checks with dates.

Outcome: the file shows the firm is passported, not French-authorised, and identifies the supervisor that would act if something went wrong.

An agent that started too early

Facts: a French e-money institution signs a mandate with a retail network on Monday, files the agent declaration on the portal on Tuesday, and the network wants to start taking payments on Wednesday.

What the rule says: the ACPR’s position is that an agent must not carry out any operation until its registration is entered in REGAFI, and the principal is fully liable for its agent.

What the practitioner does: holds the launch, monitors REGAFI until the agent appears with the right services and country, and only then activates the agent’s access.

Outcome: no unregistered activity, and an audit trail showing the go-live followed the register.

The distributor that is not in REGAFI

Facts: during an audit, a compliance analyst finds that 40 shops selling the institution’s prepaid vouchers do not appear in REGAFI and flags them as unregistered agents.

What the rule says: under Articles L. 525-8 and following CMF the shops are e-money distributors, and the ACPR says distributors mandated in France by a French-authorised issuer are not registered with it. Agents providing payment services would be.

What the practitioner does: confirms from the contracts that the shops only distribute and redeem e-money and provide no payment service, documents that conclusion.

Outcome: the finding is closed on the facts, and the analyst’s checklist now separates agents from distributors.

10. FAQ

Who maintains REGAFI?

The ACPR, the French banking and insurance supervisor attached to the Banque de France. Since 1 July 2026 regafi.fr covers both banking and insurance.

How often is REGAFI updated?

The ACPR describes it as updated daily. It also offers APIs for automated access.

Are agents of EEA payment institutions in REGAFI?

The firm itself appears as an inbound LPS or branch passport. For its agents, the ACPR points to the home authority’s register; the EBA register is the cross-border check.

Are e-money distributors registered?

Not with the ACPR when mandated in France by a French-authorised issuer. Cross-border distribution goes through a passport notification.

Is ORIAS the same as REGAFI?

No. ORIAS registers intermediaries such as IOBSPs and insurance intermediaries. REGAFI records authorised firms and the agents that provide payment services on their behalf.

What is a CIB?

The code interbancaire, the interbank code assigned to French-authorised institutions. It appears on the REGAFI entry and some firms hold more than one.

11. What to do, today

COO: look up your own REGAFI entry and confirm the services, identifiers and événements match your authorisation decision.
Head of partnerships: make a dated REGAFI and home-register check a contract precondition for every PSP counterparty.
Agent network owner: gate every agent go-live on its appearance in REGAFI, and reconcile your agent list against the register quarterly.
MLRO: keep agents and distributors in separate inventories, with the legal basis for each.
Data team: replace manual lookups with the REGAFI API for periodic counterparty reviews.