Romanian banks are working with Transfond on a new payment scheme, RoPay, through which a beneficiary will be able to request money from a payer, Ionut Chiriac, chapter lead customer journey, Payments division, at ING Bank Romania, said on Tuesday.

„A scheme that is, if anything, more of an additional service on top of the instant payment scheme. It is called RoPay. This new scheme offers the possibility for a beneficiary, whether a merchant, an individual or any beneficiary you can imagine, to ask for money from a payer. If now we are used to transferring money, with the new scheme, practically anyone can ask for money from the other party,” said Ionut Chiriac, at a meeting with the press organised by the bank.

He explained that money request schemes exist in Romania at the intra-bank level, but now they want to apply at the national level.

„What we want to do now is to bring this scheme nationwide and basically merchants, payers, to be in this scheme together and be able to transfer money quickly, securely and first and foremost cheaply. And the fees for that scheme have been negotiated, discussed with the Transfond, so that we have a scheme as cheap as possible…The final testing of the systems has been completed between the first two banks that will go into production and they are waiting for the authorisation of the scheme from the National Bank. We hope to receive the National Bank’s authorisation by the end of June and sometime in mid-July to come up with the new RoPay payment scheme,” said Ionut Chiriac.

According to him, by the end of this year there will be four banks and in 2025 another four banks will enter. The first two banks to enter the system this year are Libra Bank and CEC Bank, and the next two banks will be ING and BRD. In 2025 BCR, Banca Transilvania and Raiffeisen Bank have been announced. He also mentioned that there are other smaller banks working on implementing the payment scheme.

AGERPRES