Today, in Ohrid, the 11th Conference on Payments and Market Infrastructures, organized by the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia in cooperation with the Central Bank of the Netherlands was started. This year, the Conference, which is traditionally international, is entitled: "Let's Get Digital" and will cover topics that, inter alia, refer to new payment digital technologies developed by the Fintech sector, security in digital transformation, global trends in trade finance, and the new regulation in the payment area in the European Union.
“The irruption of digital payments relates to its many opportunities. Embracing payments digitalization has the potential to substantially reduce the costs, increase the efficiency and enable broader access to payment services. With the rise of new payment digital technologies developed by the FinTech, and increasingly adopted by banks, consumers and merchants nowadays have a wide range of payment products to choose from. Innovation developments, such as instant payments, payment initiation services, person-to-person mobile payments and contactless proximity payments have the digitization process accompanied by innovative solutions in their essence. The payment innovations and digitization process also have an impact on the transformation of payment market infrastructures. These developments however, have raised various issues related to the requirements for bank openness, customer security, transparency and trust in the payment services market, as well as consumer rights protection. Hence, the regulators have to adopt appropriate legislative framework that supports digitalization, innovation and competition, but also take care of security and protection. In this context, it can be noticed that the European Union is a global leader in this domain.” – emphasized the Governor of the NBRM, Anita Angelovska Bezhoska, PhD, in her opening address.
After giving a short review of almost any of the trends that emerge as a result of new payment digital technologies, as well as the steps taken by the EU by revising the Payment Services Directive (PSD2), she emphasizes that the Republic of Macedonia should not stand aside in this changing environment full of challenges. “To tackle the rising challenges, we have already drafted a new Law on payment services and payment systems which transposes the PSD2, as well as other European Union relevant directives and regulations in the payments area. The new payment regulation aims to boost the competition in the traditionally bank dominated payments market by opening the entrance for FinTech companies which can provide innovative payment services as well as establish and operate new payment systems. At the same time, we assert our focus on maintaining financial stability by enhancing the resilience of payment market infrastructures which are being assessed against the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures.” – emphasized Angelovska Bezhoska, PhD.
In her address, she reminded that the largest retail payment system in the Republic of Macedonia established a Guarantee Scheme in 2017 which is in accordance with the regulation of the NBRM that aims to effect the same-day settlement and thus, minimize the liquidity risk in the important payment system in case of a participant default. At the same time, she also reminded that we engaged in facilitating cross-border payments in euro in 2017 by establishing a link between our RTGS payment system MIPS and TARGET2, which relies on the highly appreciated cooperation with the Bank of Italy.
“And we do not stop here. Our recent efforts have been focused on building a Strategy for reducing the cash usage and thus, increasing the digitalization and cashless payments, which is a joint project of the central bank, the Ministry of Finance and the banking community.” – announced the Governor of the NBRM.
The following three days, by Friday, the Conference will be attended by lecturers - high officials from the European Commission, the European Central Bank, the central banks belonging to the European System of Central Banks, the Bank for International Settlements and the World Bank. Also, in Ohrid, this significant event will be attended by representatives of 21 central bank from the region of Western, Central and Eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Middle East and North Africa. The NBRM will also hold panel session in which acknowledged experts from payment systems, Fintech sector and representatives from payment institution will discuss the transformational power of digital payments and payment challenges in the integrating world.
