OREANDA-NEWS. On August 2013, the banking community marks the 20th anniversary of the introduction of circulation of electronic money in Ukraine. On this very day in 1993 the System of Electronic Payments run by the National Bank of Ukraine (hereinafter referred to as the SEP) processed the first electronic payments. The SEP provides a clear indication that Ukraine takes the lead in introducing new banking technologies.

"Over the past 20 years, the SEP has proved its reliability and efficiency and demonstrated that it possesses the potential to process the growing volume of payments. So far the SEP has successfully exercised its functions of the national system of interbank settlements. According to the Law of Ukraine "On the National Bank of Ukraine" the National Bank of Ukraine is responsible for the smooth, reliable and efficient operation of the SEP. The funds placed by the SEP participants with the National Bank of Ukraine are used to execute funds transfers. The principles underlying the SEP operation promote confidence among the banking community in it," noted Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine Valerii Prokhorenko.

The SEP is Ukraine's systemically important payment system. It has been assessed by the international experts who, in particular, have acknowledged that the SEP broadly complies with the "Core Principles for Systemically Important Payment Systems and the "Central Bank's Responsibilities" (the BIS Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems (Basel, 2001)

"The CEP handles 98% of interbank funds transfers in the national currency in Ukraine, whereas 2% of such transfers are processed through the correspondent accounts opened by banks with other banks. As of 1 August 2013, 452 institutions are the SEP participants," said Ms. Nataliia Syniavska, Director of General Department of Information Technologies and Payment Systems.

In the first half of 2013, the SEP participants executed 164 million initial payments and sent the electronic settlement notices amounting to UAH 5, 680 billion, being by 2% more in quantity and by 8% in value, compared with the first half of the previous year. The SEP is a real time gross settlement system (according to the international classification – RTGS). Payments processed through the SEP in the online mode are executed immediately. It takes 20 minutes to process payments in the file mode (75% of payments). It takes about one hour to execute 99.5% of payments. On average, 1.2 – 2 million payments are processed per day. The money turnover on the SEP participants' accounts ranges from 1.5 to 2, reaching 3.8 on certain days. The value of payments processed through the SEP in 2012 exceeds approximately 8 times GDP.

"The SEP fully meets Ukraine's needs in interbank settlements in the national currency. The National Bank of Ukraine makes continuous efforts to develop and improve the SEP and introduce new mechanisms and facilities to meet Ukrainian banking system's needs. The key goal is to ensure sustained and reliable operation of the SEP. Among other things, the National Bank of Ukraine is set to deploy up-to-date and reliable information exchange standards involving up-to-date integration tools based on the ESB-related architecture and technology. In the long run, the SEP servers are expected to undergo a transition to J2EE and XML-related technologies and web-service based on open standards," noted Ms. Vira Rychakivska, Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine.