08 Aug 2025

On August 7, 2025, the obligation for all payment service providers to ensure the ability to make instant credit transfers for their customers came into effect. CS had prepared for this stage in advance, following the roadmap of the National Bank of Ukraine. Our partner banks began connecting to the instant payment system as early as the end of 2024. Since then, we have been actively developing and improving the functionality of our instant payments service.

Practical proof of service quality

"We began implementing instant payment capabilities even before the NBU’s mandatory requirements came into force. This allowed our partner banks to gain practical experience, and enabled us to enhance the service based on real-world usage. Today, all banks using the B2 core banking system are technologically able to work with instant payments both for receiving and sending transfers," notes Roman Maievskyi, Head of Technical Support at CS.

CS’s early readiness for the implementation of instant payments allowed partner banks not only to connect to the system on time but also to gain significant operational experience with the new functionality. During this period, the company was able to further optimize the solution based on practical application. The process is fully automated – there is no operator involvement, and the system interacts exclusively with the banks’ customer applications.

Evolution based on practical experience

In working with early adopter banks, CS continuously enhanced its technological base for instant payments. Understanding the diverse needs of the banking sector, the company implemented a number of unique features:

Integration with financial companies – banks that own financial companies can fully use our instant payment service.

Flexible service terms – the system supports different applications with varied pricing and service conditions for a single bank, taking into account individual integration with card systems.

Standardized rejection codes – banks’ customer applications receive unified rejection codes, enabling automatic processing of all declines and restrictions. For example, if an instant payment is blocked due to financial monitoring or non-resident registry checks, the application can automatically initiate a standard payment instead.

Technological advantage

The CS-developed solution fully complies with NBU requirements and ensures:

• Execution of transactions within 10 seconds
• Transfers of up to UAH 100,000 in accordance with regulatory requirements
• 24/7 operation
• Automatic completion of all checks for instant payment eligibility, including financial monitoring, and automatic investigation of the final status in case of technical failures
• Scalability and the ability to process instant payment requests in parallel by different handlers.

"We sought to take into account all the wishes of our partner banks, which allowed our system to become more flexible, efficient, secure, and at the same time simpler to administer and monitor," adds Roman Maievskyi.

Development prospects

The innovations implemented by CS are universal – functionality developed for specific banks can also be applied in other financial institutions as they move towards more active use of instant payments.

Having successful experience in similar projects, including the implementation of instant transfers in Moldova, CS continues to refine its solutions, ensuring Ukrainian banks’ technological readiness for the next stages of the Instant Payments service rollout and for future integration with the European SEPA instant payment system.