Dr Zsolt Selmeczi-Kovács
CEO, GIRO Elszámolásforgalmi Zrt.
A new era in payments PRELIMINARY PROJECT The idea of implementing instant payments was already a major cornerstone in GIRO Zrt.’s strategy prepared and published in 2014. GIRO already prepared for this task actively back then. It was assiduously building its knowledge base on instant payments and its network of suppliers, making it clear to us from the beginning that the implementation of instant payments would not only be ‘one’ of GIRO’s several payment developments in the decade. As a result of the ceaseless expansion of the knowledge base any fear from the unknown and uncertainty were replaced by cautious optimism in GIRO’s general atmosphere. We started to believe that in the end we would find a reliable technological partner that meets several important requirements. We expected that the SEPA standard on instant payments would be ready in time, and that it would be accepted by the Hungarian community as the operational basis of instant payments. We also secretly hoped that even if all banks had to join the system upon the launch, the system would not be overloaded with the often unpredictable corporate batch transactions. In the end, at its meeting on 26 April 2016, the MNB’s Financial Stability Council adopted the concept of the instant payment service in Hungary, prepared by the Magyar Nemzeti Bank’s experts in cooperation with GIRO Zrt. During the market consultation in the summer and autumn months, GIRO formulated a detailed plan for the implementation of the central IPS infrastructure. However, our colleagues working in the MNB’s payments area posed a somewhat unexpected and huge challenge to us, in the form of a competitor. In line with international trends, the option to implement the central IPS infrastructure within the central bank rather than in GIRO was considered. In the end, the MNB’s Executive Board decided the issue at its meeting on 27 March 2017, mandating GIRO to build the central IPS infrastructure. This also marked the
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