Central bankers discuss plans to create single payment space and to set up digital infrastructure for EAEU member states

Plans to create the single payment space (SPS) and to develop digital infrastructure of EAEU member states were discussed in the Bank of Russia at the first meeting of the Working Group for the coordinated development of national payment systems.

The meeting was attended by the heads and representatives of the central and national banks of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Once created, among other things, with the help of new financial technologies, this space will enable customers and their respective funds transfer operators to make domestic and cross-border transfers in the national currencies of the SPS member states at a broadly new level.

To sum up the meeting, the parties signed an action plan to organise the activities of the Working Group in 2017. The key points of the plan are cooperation in the sphere of national payment systems and development of payment technologies, introduction of ISO 20022, and interaction of national payment card systems.

‘Cooperation and work in close contact in these broad areas are primary and necessary conditions for the development of the single payment space, and also innovative and integration instruments for the EAEU countries’, stressed Olga Skorobogatova, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Russia, adding, ‘We have agreed on specific areas of joint work and on the complete alignment of our efforts both in the sphere of payment systems, and in the study and development of digital technologies for the elaboration of a brand new payment infrastructure. Considerable attention will be given to ensuring cybersecurity’.