Article 16 Record retention
1. Information on the payer and the payee shall not be retained for longer than strictly necessary. Payment service providers of the payer and of the payee shall retain records of the information referred to in Articles 4 to 7 for a period of five years.
2. Upon expiry of the retention period referred to in paragraph 1, payment service providers shall ensure that the personal data is deleted, unless otherwise provided for by national law, which shall determine under which circumstances payment service providers may or shall further retain the data. Member States may allow or require further retention only after they have carried out a thorough assessment of the necessity and proportionality of such further retention, and where they consider it to be justified as necessary for the prevention, detection or investigation of money laundering or terrorist financing. That further retention period shall not exceed five years.