Smart Platforms Can Help Telcos and Lenders Thrive Amid EU Credit Reforms

Something big is quietly reshaping Europe’s consumer economy—and both Telco and banking leaders are beginning to notice and prepare.

In 2023, the European Union adopted revisions to its Consumer Credit Directive (CCD2)—a sweeping update to its current credit rules that extends regulatory oversight to small loans, interest-free installment plans, and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) products. The types of offers that Telcos have long used to sell smartphones, tablets, and laptops will now fall under the same legal and regulatory framework as car loans and credit cards.

CCD2 is not just a regulatory tweak—it’s a shift in the terrain.

With national laws required to be in place by November 2025, starting one year later in November 2026, every device sold on monthly payments across the EU will require clear pre-contractual disclosures, creditworthiness assessments, standardized APRs, and advertising restrictions. In Belgium, there has already been implementation through laws like Book XIX, which add debt collection constraints and registration requirements with the FSMA for firms offering credit. Others, from France to Sweden, are preparing similar national overlays.

The impact? Telcos and banks are being pulled into unfamiliar territory.

• For Telcos, it means choosing whether to become credit intermediaries—an identity few are built for—or risk losing the ability to offer installment plans altogether.

• For Banks, it presents the operational headache of being tethered to physical goods they don’t want to manage—warranties, upgrades, customer service calls about cracked screens.

Some players have started to move. Iliad Italia integrated Younited Credit, a Fintech (and LiftForward partner) that offers instant device financing that meets CCD2 requirements. This is absolutely a smart move, but stitching partnerships together—cleanly and consistently for scale across Europe—comes with complexity that needs to be addressed.

That is where a platform like LiftForward is essential.

LiftForward is not a Lender or Telco; it is a platform built to connect them. The platform provides financial and operational middleware that has been honed over several years to combine regulatory precision, consumer simplicity, and business model flexibility for commercial and consumer finance, subscription and upgrade programs..

The platform is valuable to address CCD2 because it does not treat compliance and sales conversion as trade-offs; but as partners. It is built with the understanding that user experience, revenue growth, and regulatory clarity can, and should, co-exist if you orchestrate them correctly.

LiftForward’s technology is designed to integrate seamlessly into Telco checkout and upgrade journeys, while also giving Banks a clean framework for issuing credit without asset exposure.

• For Telcos, this means the ability to offer rich, flexible device programs across multiple countries without building or increasing legal infrastructure and overhead for credit issuance.
• For Lenders, it means efficient credit deployment without the overhead of product management.
• For Customers, it means a fast, simple, trustworthy purchase experience with clear areas of responsibility across all the players and a path to renew and upgrade easily.

In the end: LiftForward helps both sides move faster, scale smarter, and stay compliant, all while delivering experiences consumers expect and businesses can monetize.

We are entering a moment where the mechanics of consumer credit in the EU are being redefined as Embedded Finance is growing. As CCD2 moves from directive to reality, Telcos and Lenders face a choice: spend significant time and money retrofitting legacy systems and partnerships to meet the new standards—or connect with a platform already built for what’s coming.

For the EU Telcos and Lenders ready to lead, the need to comply can create an opportunity to transform. The path starts with choosing the right partner to help chart it.

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