PESEL restriction

PESEL is the Polish national identification number. A restriction is meant to stop loans and other obligations taken out in someone else's name with a stolen identity. The Act of July 7, 2023 amending certain acts to limit certain effects of identity theft (ustawa o zmianie niektórych ustaw w celu ograniczania niektórych skutków kradzieży tożsamości, Journal of Laws 2023, item 1394) added a register of PESEL restrictions to the Population Records Act (Articles 23a to 23p, added in 2023). The minister responsible for digital affairs keeps the register. An adult can restrict their number free of charge, online or in person, and withdraw the restriction later. Under an announcement of the Minister of Digital Affairs, the register started operating on November 17, 2023.

Lenders, banks, payment service providers and other listed institutions can check it under Article 23m of the Population Records Act. The check returns whether the number is restricted at the moment of the query, and on request whether it was restricted on a date the checker names. A person can see who checked their number and when (Article 23l).

For consumer credit the key rule is Article 9b of the Consumer Credit Act. Before concluding a consumer credit agreement, and before an amendment to that agreement that increases the debt, the lender must check in the register whether the consumer's PESEL is restricted. If the number was restricted at the moment the agreement was concluded, the lender cannot demand satisfaction of the claim from the consumer or their legal successors and cannot sell the receivable. The obligation applies from June 1, 2024.

In the system, the check is a step of the application state machine. It has to run before every new agreement, including a repeat loan for an existing customer, and before every amendment that increases the debt. Whether a given product change, such as a loan extension with a fee, counts as one is a question for your lawyer, but the system should be able to run the check at that point.

Article 9b ties the consequence to the moment of concluding the agreement, not the moment of the check. A check run when the customer starts the application does not cover a restriction set the next morning, before the customer signs. Run the check as close to signing as possible, or again at signing, and store the time and result of each query with the application.

When the register reports a restricted number, the application needs its own status. It should stop with a message the customer understands, and the customer, who may have set the restriction themselves, needs to know they can withdraw it in the register and come back. Whether the application resumes or starts again is a product decision, but it should be made on purpose.

If the register is unavailable, Article 9b(5) applies: after a repeated failed attempt the lender may refuse to conclude the agreement until the system is back, or conclude it with due diligence in verifying the customer's identity and document that verification. Under Article 9b(6), if the agreement was concluded during an outage that lasted more than 15 minutes (other than one announced under Article 23c(5) of the Population Records Act), the bar on claims does not apply. The system needs a retry policy, a decision rule for the outage path, and a record of when the outage started and how long it lasted.

The amending act was published in the Journal of Laws on July 21, 2023. Its changes to the Consumer Credit Act, the Banking Law and other acts apply from June 1, 2024. The Banking Law has a parallel rule for banks (Article 105d), which also covers savings accounts and leasing. Article 9b(3) of the Consumer Credit Act exempts a narrow case: credit paid straight to a seller the borrower already has a contract with, granted remotely with the consumer authenticated by individual credentials, under a continuous agreement capped at the minimum wage, where the PESEL and identity were checked before that agreement was signed. Under Article 19 of the amending act, credit granted under continuous agreements signed before June 1, 2024 is outside Article 9b, and the lender must tell those customers that no check is made.

In Aasa24, the lending app we have built and developed for Aasa Polska since May 2023, the app shows the PESEL check as a step of the application. Between June and August 2024 we added handling of application status 44, "Check PESEL Restriction", to the app. In March 2026 we added status 56, "Manual - PESEL restricted", to the app. The app turns more than 40 application and loan states into plain messages.