Payment instruments

Millions of cash and cashless payments are made each day in Slovakia by individuals, firms and public institutions.
Cashless payment instruments are among the most efficient ways of making payments. In Slovakia, payment cards are the most widely used cashless payment instruments, followed by credit transfers (a payment service which allows a payer to instruct the institution with which its account is held to transfer funds to a beneficiary) and direct debits (a payment service for the debiting of a payer’s payment account whereby a payment transaction is initiated by the payee on the basis of an authorisation given by the payer).

The European Central Bank (ECB) regularly collects statistical data from Eurosystem national central banks on the number of payment transactions made in each EU country. According to the most recent data, payment cards account for 51.6% of the total number of cashless payments in Slovakia; credit transfers, 41.1%; and direct debits, 3.2%.

The ECB’s latest statistics on payment services and payment systems can be found here:
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/payment_statistics/payment_services/html/index.en.html

The principal legislation governing payment services and payment systems in Slovakia is the Payment Services Act (No 492/2009),which transposes into Slovak law the European Union’s Second Payment Services Directive (PSD 2).

Slovak law in the area of payment services also includes the following directly applicable regulations of the European Parliament and of the Council:

• Regulation (EU) 2021/1230 on crossborder payments in the Union (codification) ;
• Regulation (EU) 260/2012 establishing technical and business requirements for credit transfers and direct debits in euro and amending Regulation (EC) No 924/2009;
• Regulation (EU) 2015/847 on information accompanying transfers of funds and repealing Regulation (EC) No 1781/2006;
• Regulation 2015/751 on interchange fees for card-based payment transactions;
• delegated and implementing regulations pursuant to PSD 2 (for example, Commission Delegated Regulation 2018/389. Supplementing Directive (EU) 2015/366 of the European Parliament and of the Council with regard to regulatory technical standards for strong customer authentication and common and secure open standards of communication).

Further components of the legal framework include two decrees of Národná banka Slovenska: Decree No 8/2009 laying down the structure of domestic and international bank account numbers and details about the issuance of an identifier code converter; and Decree No 6/2013 on direct debit creditor identifiers and the register of direct debit credit identifiers.