TABLE OF CONTENTS

This article refers to the following from the FIFA regulations:

  • Sections 3 and 4 of the FIFA Clearing House Regulations (FCHR)

Introduction

The FIFA Clearing House (FCH) entity is a payment institution regulated by the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution, ACPR) located in Paris, France, which processes the distribution of training rewards between new and training clubs. The FCH is a separate legal entity but is a full subsidiary of FIFA. Established on 16 November 2022, it plays a key role in centralising, processing and automating training compensation and solidarity contribution payments between clubs, as well as promoting financial transparency and integrity within the international transfer system.


Although the FCH is a full subsidiary of FIFA, it operates independently from FIFA. This means that the onboarding of clubs, the compliance assessment, and the distribution of payments are carried out independently by the FCH. 


After an electronic player passport (EPP) has been approved and allocation statements have been generated and notified to the relevant parties, these allocation statements are sent to the FCH entity to provide information on the new (i.e. paying) club responsible for the payment of training rewards, as well as the training (i.e. receiving) parties and the specific amounts that they are each eligible to receive.


This notification initiates the process summarised here and detailed below.


Registration on the FCH Client Portal

Launched in 2025, the FIFA Clearing House Client Portal is a secure, streamlined platform that increases transparency across onboarding and payment processes, enhances document sharing and storage, and empowers users to directly request that the FCH restart failed compliance assessments. 


An organisation’s registration on the Client Portal is triggered when the first allocation statement that includes the organisation is notified by FIFA. Once they have completed their registration on the platform, notification of subsequent allocation statements involving the organisation will not require this step.


Upon receipt of the allocation statement, the FCH sends a one-time invitation to register on the Client Portal to the C&P Manager, whose contact details are sent to the FCH by FIFA through the allocation statement. The C&P Manager must register on the Client Portal within 15 days using the email address to which the invitation was sent. Failure to do so may trigger an escalation to FIFA for compliance failure. For more information, please refer to our article on compliance and payment failures.


Note: The invitation to register is sent from the notifications@fifaclearinghouse.org. Make sure to add this email address to your safe sender list to receive all communications.


While only the C&P Manager can complete their organisation’s initial registration on the FCH Client Portal, once registered, they may designate up to two additional users per organisation via the Secure Message function in the Client Portal.


Note: If the C&P Manager who received the invitation to register has left your organisation, please contact the TMS Helpdesk.


TMS vs FCH Client Portal

Although both TMS and the FCH Client Portal are used within the Clearing House process, each platform operates independently and serves a distinct purpose. Understanding which actions must be completed in which system is essential to avoid delays or compliance issues. 


Below are some key elements to consider when navigating each platform:

  • While not all clubs are required to have TMS access, any organisation, if requested to do so by the FCH, must register and onboard on the Client Portal.
  • Users are managed independently on each platform, which means that access to TMS does not grant access to the FCH Client Portal, and vice-versa. However, the invitation to register on the FCH Client Portal can only be sent to the C&P Manager defined in TMS. Therefore, the absence of valid and up-to-date contact details in TMS will prevent your organisation from being able to register on the Client Portal. 
  • Once registered, if your organisation needs to update its contact details, add new users or deactivate existing users, it must do so in both TMS and the Client Portal to ensure that it continues to receive all relevant communication regarding Clearing House processes.
  • Member Associations are responsible for requesting TMS access on behalf of their affiliated clubs. On the Client Portal, invitations to register and onboard are sent by the FCH once an allocation statement involving the club is notified by FIFA. This registration link cannot be requested prior to the notification of the allocation statement.
  • An individual may be designated as a user for more than one organisation on the FCH Client Portal. However, users in TMS may only have one account for one organisation at a time. In both cases, user accounts are personal and access must not be shared with a third party.
  • For clubs without access to TMS, Member Associations are responsible for reviewing the EPP and submitting any relevant documentation on behalf of their affiliated clubs. The same does not apply to the FCH Client Portal as Member Associations only have visibility over the payment orders in which they are directly involved. Member Associations cannot act on behalf of their affiliated clubs, nor manage or monitor their clubs’ onboarding and compliance assessment progress.


Data and documents collection 

Once an organisation has registered on the FCH Client Portal, a range of data and documents will be requested, which must be submitted in one of the three FIFA languages: English, Spanish, or French. If a document is translated into one of the FIFA languages, a copy of the original document must also be provided.


The FCH entity provides a comprehensive list of all documents to be submitted during this stage of the process, which can be found in their FAQ section, to allow your organisation to proactively prepare for its onboarding. If required, additional documentation may be requested by the FCH via the Secure Message function or via the reactivation of the data and documents section on the Client Portal.


Failure to provide all required documents within the deadline may trigger an escalation to FIFA for compliance failure. For more information, please refer to our article on compliance and payment failures.


During the data and documents collection stage, in case of first onboarding on the Client Portal, organisations must designate a Terms and Conditions signatory who can either be a legal representative or have a power of attorney to act on behalf of the organisation.


Note: The signatory does not have to be the C&P Manager who completed the organisation’s registration on the FCH Client Portal but must, nonetheless, be a user on the platform. 

Compliance assessment 

Once all requested documentation has been submitted, the FCH will complete a compliance assessment to determine whether the organisation can receive its Accreditation and be accepted as a client of the FCH. 


During this review, the FCH may request additional documents to be submitted; it is important to remain attentive to any FCH communications as the failure to provide all required documents may trigger an escalation to FIFA for compliance failure.


If the party does not pass the compliance assessment, the FIFA administration will be notified and will be responsible for reviewing and imposing sanctions, where applicable. Nonetheless, parties remain obligated to successfully pass a subsequent compliance assessment within six months of the initial failure. In most cases, this assessment can be restarted or continued at any time through the FCH Client Portal dashboard.


Only once the compliance assessment is passed by the new club and at least one of the training clubs will the payment process begin. All other training clubs that have yet to pass the compliance assessment must continue or restart the assessment until it is successfully passed. 


For more information, please refer to our article on compliance and payment failures.

Terms and Conditions signature 

Once compliance assessment has been passed, the T&C signatory designated during the data and document collection process will be prompted to accept the Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) on the Client Portal within 14 days of the date of notification. Failure to do so may trigger an escalation to FIFA for compliance failure. For more information, please refer to our article on compliance and payment failures.


The signature of the T&Cs is only required once per organisation, not for each transaction or allocation statement. 


Once the party successfully passes the compliance assessment and signs the Terms and Conditions, it will receive its Accreditation and be accepted as a client of the FCH. The Accreditation will be valid for a limited period of time, until reaccreditation is requested by the FIFA Clearing House.

Payment collection and distribution 

The payment process begins once the new club and the training club involved in a payment order have each passed the compliance assessment.


The new club will be notified via email that a request to pay (RtP) is available in the Client Portal. The RtP details the amounts payable via the FCH and provides instructions on how to make the payment. 


The RtP may include training reward payments related to several payment orders included in different allocation statements from the same EPP that have been consolidated into one document. The payment of the full amount must be completed by the new club within 30 days from a bank account in the name of the club and which has been registered in the Client Portal during the onboarding process.


Note: To ensure that payments made to the FCH are correctly received and allocated, the reference provided in the RtP should always be included in the bank transfer details.


Upon receipt of the payment from the new club, the FCH will generate a Distribution Statement summarising the payments to be made to the training club(s) and subsequently process the payments to the approved bank accounts as set by the organisation on the Client Portal.


It is not possible for the paying and receiving parties to agree on a different amount of training rewards to be paid via the FCH, nor on an instalment plan, or any other arrangement to be paid via the FCH. The full payment of the amounts due as established on the payment orders and the Requests to Pay must in any case be made through the FCH.


Failure of the new club to pay the requested amount in full by the specified deadline may trigger the notification of a new RtP including an administrative levy and subsequently, an escalation to FIFA for payment failure. For more information, please refer to our article on compliance and payment failures.


Both the new and training clubs can review upcoming and historical payments in the ‘Payments’ section of the FCH Client Portal. These payments, along with their status, are also visible in TMS under the ‘Player Passports’ tab, complementing the information found in the Client Portal. As a reminder, only payments processed through the Client Portal in which your organisation is directly involved as the paying or receiving party will be displayed in these sections. For more information, please refer to the overview of training reward payments.

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