Instant Payments

Instant payments

While until recently we had to wait two or three days to transfer money from bank to bank and then only one working day, from January 9, 2025, it takes only seconds in selected banks. More precisely, receiving such instant payments. This is thanks to European legislation, which determines the obligation to accept instant payments for all banks in the euro area from January 9, 2025.

Until that date, instant payments – both sending and receiving them – were voluntary. Since February 2022, Slovenská sporiteľňa, VÚB, Tatrabanka, and later J&T banka and Fio banka, have gradually joined the SEPA instant payment scheme.

What instant payments mean in practice

If you send money from a bank that supports sending instant payments to any other bank in the entire eurozone (and it doesn’t matter whether to Trnava, Michalovce, or Lisbon or Helsinki), the money will arrive within a few seconds. Even outside working hours, on weekends or holidays, i.e.: 24/7/365.

As part of the Eurosystem, Národná banka Slovenska provides the Slovak banking market with the instant payment settlement service of the Target Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) payment system operated by the Eurosystem.

From January 9, 2025, all banks are involved in the instant payment system and all clients can receive instant payments in their accounts.

Banks had to prepare for instant payments

For instant payments to work smoothly, banks had to adjust their banking systems to be able to receive and send instant payments within a 10-second time limit.

The benefits for their clients, besides the speed of sending and receiving payments, include that such payments cannot cost more than the previously “standard” transfer. Additionally, until now, the implementation of instant payments by banks was voluntary.

Instant payments in all banks

Payment service providers based in the Eurozone and provide standard SEPA payments in euros are required to:

• from 9 January 2025 offering the instant payment receiving service
• from 9 October 2025 at the latest, the instant payment sending service. In other countries outside the Eurozone, instant payments in euros will be available two years later on accounts that support euro payments.

Slovaks have immediately taken to instant payments

The number and value of instant payments in Slovakia are continuously growing. People in Slovakia are increasingly using their mobile phones, watches, payment cards, and internet banking for payments. At the end of year 2024, the share of instant payments from all SEPA transfers made in Slovakia was 27% and this share is still growing.

Banks do not charge higher fees for instant payments

The fee policy of banks is part of the business strategy of each commercial bank. Regarding the provision of instant payments, it is important to note that Slovak banks decided to support the use of instant payments right from their launch in 2022 by not introducing higher fees for processing instant payments compared to regular payments. This means that our banks already meet the requirement to maintain the same fee levels for the provision of instant payments.