institution

— a credit institution as defined in the first indent of Article 1 of Directive 77/780/EEC () including the institutions set out in the list in Article 2(2) thereof, or — an investment firm as defined in point 2 of Article 1 of Directive 93/22/EEC () excluding the institutions set out in the list in Article 2(2)(a) to (k) thereof, or — public authorities and publicly guaranteed undertakings, or — any undertaking whose head office is outside the Community and whose functions correspond to those of the Community credit institutions or investment firms as defined in the first and second indent, which participates in a system and which is responsible for discharging the financial obligations arising from transfer orders within that system. If a system is supervised in accordance with national legislation and only executes transfer orders as defined in the second indent of (i), as well as payments resulting from such orders, a Member State may decide that undertakings which participate in such a system and which have responsibility for discharging the financial obligations arising from transfer orders within this system, can be considered institutions, provided that at least three participants of this system are covered by the categories referred to in the first subparagraph and that such a decision is warranted on grounds of systemic risk