Nets wins contract for instant payments in Hungary

Nordic payments processor Nets has won an international tender to provide an instant payments system to Hungarian ACH Giro.

Wholly-owned by the Hunagarian central bank, Giro has a near monopoly on interbank payments and clearing in the country. The ACH went to tender for the new instant payments framework last year, following a a market-wide consultation conducted between the central bank and payment stakeholders in the spring of 2016.

"It's a historical step not only for us, but for the whole Hungarian financial market." says dr. Selmeczi-Kovács Zsolt, CEO of Giro. "Our ambition is to establish the foundations for a new instant payments platform. We are sure that with Nets we are able to further develop the capabilities in the payment system, and facilitate new and innovate products." 

The new system, which will be able to initiate payments up to HUF10 million, 24 hours a day and create opportunities for new electronic and mobile-based services, is planned to go-live in 2019. 

The Hungarian win for Nets follows contracts for its RealtTime24/7 platform in the Italian and Slovenian markets.

Paul Francis Walvik-Joynt, VP at Nets' Clearing Services division, says: "We continue to leverage our current deployments of RealTime24/7 with an open API architecture permitting easy customer delivery of services in a trusted environment to benefit the users. We will bring this and much more into the partnership that we now establish with Giro."