Skopje, 28 November 2025
The accession of the country to the Single Euro Payments Area - SEPA is a historic step towards modern, safe and European integrated payment infrastructure. This transformation is already bringing specific benefits to citizens and companies, which are faster, more simple and significantly cheaper transactions in euros. The Governor of the National Bank, Trajko Slaveski, in a column for the Bulletin of the Macedonian Banking Association emphasizes that SEPA is an “essential transformation, and not only a technical change”, which directly improves the quality and availability of payment services.
From 7 October, nine banks in the country already carry out credit transfers through SEPA, and by the end of the year ten banks are expected to fully join. Thanks to the SEPA membership, the fees for payments reduced by several times. Thus, for a transaction of Euro 500 the citizens now pay about Euro 4, instead of about 25, while the business entities for a transaction of Euro 20,000 that was about Euro 80, now pay less than Euro 10. These changes are annual savings of about Euro 20 million at an economy level, and the time to make payments was reduced from several days to usually less than two hours.
Following the accession to SEPA, the next strategic goal is to establish instant payments, i.e. transactions that are carried out in several seconds, 24 hours per day. The National Bank, together with the central banks from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Montenegro, is working on a joint regional instant payment system based on the European platform TIPS of the Bank of Italy. The goal is to create an interoperable payment area between the Western Balkans countries and the European Union, which will enable more simple and fast denar payments in the country, better turnover of assets for companies, lower costs for cross-border transactions and instant arrival of the remittances in euros.
In the next period, the modernization of the payment system will be aimed at full utilization of the new infrastructure, digitalization of payments, reduction of the use of cash and further harmonization of the regulations with the European standards. This provides greater transparency, innovative services, fair competition and higher consumer protection. “Modernization of the payments is an investment in the competitiveness of the economy. However, behind each technology, there must be confidence, in both the system and the institutions and in the stability of the currency”, the Governor Slaveski said.
The reforms in the payment system are an investment in a better standard of the citizens, more efficient operations of the companies and a stronger, European integrated economy. SEPA and instant payments open the door to a future where every transfer is fast, safe and available, a future that we build for the new generations and a modern European payment area.