Skopje, 4 August 2025  

During July 2026, the National Bank, together with banks and other MIPS participants, successfully implemented the first cycle of the testing of the new system solution, which confirmed its functionality and the readiness for continuation of the next phases of the implementation. Within the testing, most of the payment messages envisaged by the project were successfully processed, according to the ISO 20022 standard.

Upon completion of the first cycle of the testing, the National Bank held a work meeting with the MIPS participants, where the results of the current activities were presented, the issues identified during the testing were discussed and the next steps for the successful implementation of the project were harmonized.

As emphasized by Bijlana Donovska - Gecheva, Manager of the Payment Systems Department in the National Bank, the activities for finalization of the tests and preparation for introduction of the new system solution in regular use, will continue in the forthcoming period.

The introduction of the ISO 20022 standard is an important step in the modernization of the national payment infrastructure. The new standard will enable exchange of higher-quality and richer data in the payment operations, more efficient automatic processing of payments, simpler conduct of the controls and larger harmonization with the standards and practices of the European Central Bank and the European payment systems. Thus, conditions for more efficient, safer and more modern payment services will be created, in accordance with the European trends and the obligations in the European integration process.

The EU-funded project “Strengthening the capacity of the National Bank to deal with external statistics, and the payment system and statistics”, in addition to the introduction of the ISO 20022 standard in MIPS, also includes establishment of a data warehouse for the purposes of external statistics, which further strengthens the institutional capacities of the National Bank in these two significant areas.