Business news

MINSK, 23 October (BelTA) - The National Bank intends to launch an instant payments service in Belarus in 2019, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus (NBRB) Dmitry Kalechits said at the international forum on information technologies in banking industry BankIT 2018, BelTA learned.

“This is a basic project for many countries. It will improve payment services for businesses and individuals as payments will be made in real time,” Dmitry Kalechits said.

The operator and the concept of instant payments have been chosen. Work is underway on technical aspects of the project. The service will be operated in a test mode as from 1 January 2019 and will go live on 1 July 2019. The launch of the service will make it possible to receive money within minutes. The service will be available 24/7.

Participation in the instant payments service will be voluntary for banks, the deputy chairman of the National Bank said.

Dmitry Kalechits also identified the main areas of work for the National Bank taking into account the digital transformation of the sector. These are the development of the payment and settlement space, remote identification, distributed registry technologies, the development of the Open API, big data, artificial intelligence and computer-aided learning, cyber security.