Transfond about instant payments project: „Go live expected for Q2 2018”

Transfond has just started User Acceptance Test for Instant payments, February next year being the ending of this phase of the project. Interbank Payments will be processed round-the-clock, the funds being available in seconds for the beneficiary.

Banks will be able to start their own tests as soon as Transfond is ending the UAT, i.e. February 2018 and than Go live expected for Q2 2018.

The interest among banks is very high. Major banks in Romania will start testing the instant payments system in the first part of the upcoming year, Bogdan Nastase, project manager Transfond announced. Moreover, by the end of 2018  Transfond is expecting that six banks could offer the service on the market.

“Instant payments aims to transfer money 24/7 in a few seconds from an account to another. It’s a system that will be used very easy by the clients of the banks that will offer it on the market. The project is completed from the technical point of view, with the internal testing in February. Starting February 2018 banks can test the application. We expect that six banks to offer the service on the market by the end of 2018, ” said Nastase.

He explained that the implementation of the system depends very much on the banks’ capacity to allocate resources in that period and budgeting, because currently every bank plans the budget for 2018 and the project overlapped with other projects.

Moreover, Nastase said that the service will be offered initially in national currency and afterwards in euros if there are many banks that will want to pay in this currency. He also mentioned that Instant Payments offered by Transfond should be regarded as the payments infrastructure, banks being invited to build up innovative products.

More details will be provided by Mr. Nastase within his presentation at PSD2. New Business Models – Fintech Banking Summit, from 28 and 29 of November, at Romanian Banking Institute in Bucharest.