The High Court, in its recent judgment In the matter of ipagoo LLP (in administration) [2021] EWHC 2163 (Ch) (Ipagoo), has determined that no statutory trust exists over safeguarded funds held under the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 (EMRs). This can be contrasted with the decision In Re Supercapital [2020] EWHC 1685 (Ch) (Supercapital) which found that the Payment Services Regulations 2017 (PSRs) create a statutory trust over safeguarded funds.
The Supercapital judgment was the focus of our article Unfinished business? The payment services safeguarding rules after Supercapital in the December 2020 edition of Butterworths Journal of International Banking and Financial Law ((2020) 11 JIBFL 734).
The two decisions are difficult to reconcile: where the Supercapital decision found that a trust exists, in Ipagoo the court came to the opposite conclusion on almost identical legislative provisions. At the same time, where the Supercapital decision left a number of unresolved issues, including as to which assets formed part of the “trust” property, the Ipagoo decision provides some clear guidance for insolvency officeholders on which funds should be treated as part of the “Asset Pool” of customer funds for distribution.
You can read our latest article, first published in the October 2021 edition of Butterworths Journal of International Banking and Financial Law. Our payments regulation experts Mark Simpson and Julian Hui report on Ipagoo and highlight some issues for practitioners.
