Monika Németh
Leader of the Sub-Working Group on Market Services within the Working Group on Innovative Services in the nationwide project
Instant payments: The future today The introduction of instant payments and the widespread use of the system’s services are essential in today’s technological and market environment to maintain the competitiveness of businesses and the country. • Only awareness of real-time financial data and their immediate, automatic processing ensures fast and flexible response to the quick shifts in market developments. • The range, price structure and price level of banking services are critical for economic development. It has become essential to use technologies facilitating cost-effectiveness. • The well-functioning service ecosystem of card payment solutions has become an increasingly painful cost driver for merchants and service providers. The capabilities of the instant payment system may provide a digital and cost-effective solution to the above challenges. Isolated instant payment systems developed among industry players have been present in Europe for 8–10 years. Even the two most successful examples from Europe (Sweden and Denmark) show that even if market participants with a large customer base joined forces, achieving any meaningful coverage took at least six years. That is too much time. The MNB had two choices: follow the international examples and foster industry partnerships but in effect leave it entirely to the market to create instant payments, or use its regulatory instruments. The central bank wisely chose the latter option.
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