3.5 Developments relating to electronic bill payment

The developments launched by the Hungarian Post in the field of payment services may make electronic

payment of bills available on a large scale. In Hungary, most utility and other bills are still paid via postal payment services using postal inpayment money orders (yellow cheques) and postal bill inpayment orders (white cheques). In the vast majority of cases, such bills are paid via postal payment services using cash. Previously, in the course of making card payments at post offices, customers in fact used their cards to withdraw cash from their payment accounts, and could only pay their cheques with the cash withdrawn without actually receiving it. However, the typically high fees of this transaction hindered its widespread use. By the second half of 2014, legislative amendments46 adopted in recent years eliminated all legal obstacles to postal card payments actually qualifying as card purchases. As a result, from the first half of 2015, it will be possible to use the vast majority of payment cards to settle regular bills at post offices without the payment of any additional fee. Importantly, however, recent developments have also enabled the inpayment of yellow and white cheques outside of post offices without the use of cash. Since the end of last year, a mobile payment application installed on smart phones has been available for the inpayment of yellow and white cheques bearing QR codes. In this case, the bills are paid with a bankcard suitable for internet purchases following the reading of the QR code found on the cheque. As a further innovation, 20 bill payment machines were deployed nationwide in early 2015, which also enable the inpayment of cheques with payment cards independently of postal opening hours. The machines can be used for the inpayment of both pre-printed and manually completed cheques. Since cheque inpayments via both the mobile application and machines qualify as electronic orders, the amounts paid in are credited to the payment account of the service provider issuing the cheque on the business day following the business day of receiving, i.e. a day earlier than with inpayments made at post offices.

in addition to postal services, payments for utility and other services can now also be made with other

providers using bankcards via machines. Apart from postal payment services, among the options for the payment of bills several solutions have been introduced over the past year that facilitate the more widespread use of electronic payment instruments. Such providers typically do not offer bill inpayment possibility as payment service providers but are connected with the providers issuing bills and their customers in the capacity of fee collection providers. With these services, customers may make their payments via machines (typically using their bankcards) in a way that the amount owed to the bill issuer is considered to be settled at the time of payment. In this case, the amount paid is considered as the funds of the bill issuer from the time of payment. With such solutions, the machines may also provide access to the bill issuer’s other customer services, further improving the utilisation rate of the machines and the efficiency of customer service.

In order to ensure that electronic bill payment is adopted into general use, utility and other regular bills must be available and payable on the largest possible scale via electronic bill presentment and payment systems. The development of electronic bill presentment and payment in Hungary may be facilitated by the Hungarian Post’s acquisition of EBPP provider Díjnet Zrt. The adoption of electronic bill payment into general use requires the introduction of services that enable a wide range of bill issuers to offer EBPP services based on interoperable technical solutions. This would reduce bill issuers’ development

46 From 1 July 2012, a less strict specification of the payment methods available for payments between payment accounts as listed in MNB Decree

No. 18/2009 (VIII. 6.) on executing payments has made it possible to execute payments between payment accounts in ways that are not specified. Additionally, under Act CLIX of 2012 on Postal Services, from 16 July 2014 the universal postal service provider bas been authorised to settle payment transactions between payment accounts. The Hungarian Post was granted the relevant authorisation on 6 August 2014.

and administrative burdens as it may be sufficient for them to subscribe to a single EBPP service to reach a large number of consumers, while enabling consumers to access all electronically managed bills through a single registration. It is recommended that EBPP systems are constructed so that they allow access to the bills of providers that currently run their own EBPP systems. EBPP systems should further enable bill issuers with a low turnover and few customers (such as condominiums) to subscribe to the EBPP system at low cost. In respect of the electronic payments part of the services, efforts must also be made to ensure interoperability through providers’ shared use of technical solutions, and the emergence of a fragmented bill payment market must be avoided.