As of 1 April 2023, the new generation of the System of Electronic Payments of the National Bank of Ukraine (SEP) was launched.
From now own, SEP will operate based ISO 20022 and is accessible for interbank payments 24 hours seven days a week.
“Today marks one of the biggest migrations ever undertaken by financial institutions of Ukraine. Such changes occur once in a generation. I am certain that this will give a major boost for future development and upgrade of information systems in Ukrainian banks and financial institutions,” noted Oleksii Shaban, Deputy Governor of the NBU, “We would like to thank all teams, Ukrainian banks, developers and each and every specialist, expert, and manager engaged in developing, testing, and introducing these major upgrades. Great things are done in any times, regardless of the circumstances and difficulties.”
The migration to the new SEP generation involved all banks, the State Treasury Service of Ukraine, the National Depository of Ukraine, as well as software developers.
The new SEP generation is based on cutting-edge software and hardware making electronic payments faster, more convenient and secure.
ISO 20022 provided for uniformity of payment messages, single rules for filling out and processing, additional detail fields, and structured information. This will advance automation and accelerate processing of payment transactions, improve servicing of SEP participants and their customers.
Furthermore, now SEP operates 24/7 meaning around-the-clock interbank payment transactions without pausing the system and an instant shift from the current to the next calendar day.
Transition to the new SEP generation is an important technological condition of quality development of the Ukrainian payment infrastructure. In particular, in light of Ukraine’s EU Candidate Status, the NBU continues effort towards joining the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and implementing instant payments in the next SEP v. 4.1 that will be tested in 2023.
The SEP is a state banking payment system for interbank money transfers through NBU correspondent accounts.
SEP is a real-time gross settlement system (RTGS international classification). The NBU is the operator and settlement bank for the SEP.
As of 1 April 2023, 65 banks, the State Treasury Service of Ukraine, the National Depository of Ukraine, and the NBU were SEP participants.