Domestic payment traffic is about to speed up

A new MNB decree facilitating faster intraday forint transfers is published today. The advanced state-of-the-art system is expected to deliver significant benefits to both retail and corporate customers. The new settlement solution will come into effect as of July 2012.

as of 1 July 2012, electronic funds transfer orders will be settled within maximum 4 hours instead of the current 1 day. This new rule affects domestic forint (HUF) transfers. As the funds received during the day can be used for further transfers within the same day, the new system will significantly simplify and help the liquidity management and credit transfers of retail and corporate customers. Importantly, the change will eliminate the interest income currently realised on funds “in transit” for a day (“float”), allowing customers to save this sizeable amount of money.

Through the implementation of the new system the domestic banking community is taking a big step towards the integration of European payments, as the new settlement system will handle transfers in the “SEPA Credit Transfer” technical format to be introduced across Europe. This will not only significantly ease the process of changing over domestic payment transactions to euro, when Hungary adopts the single currency, but also contribute to preserving the competitiveness of Hungarian payment service providers and enhance competition among them,