Safeguarding requirements

Are transactions where both the payer and the payee are outside the EEA (e.g. a transfer between China and Hong Kong) outside the scope of the safeguarding requirements or not?

According to the Article 10 of PSD2: “The Member States or competent authorities shall require a payment institution which provides payment services as referred to in points (1) to (6) of Annex I to safeguard all funds which have been received from the payment service users or through another payment service provider for the execution of payment transactions, in either of the following ways…”. Article 10 does not determine geographical scope of safeguarding provisions. However in answer to question 250 (Q&A of PSD1) is clarified the scope of the PSD. It states that: “In accordance with Article 2, payment transactions will however only fall into the scope of the PSD when they fulfil two conditions: 1) Both payment service providers of the payer and of the payee are located in the Community. This is the case in your examples. 2) They are made in a currency of a Member State (for Titles III and IV). In the event of accounts denominated in a third country currency, the PSD will therefore not apply to the part of the transaction dealing with the debit/credit of those payment accounts, but will apply to the rest of the transaction if it is denominated in a currency of a Member State. Having in mind this answer it is questionable whether safeguarding provisions also fall into scope when only these two conditions are fulfilled.