13/12/2023

Increasing use of instant payments

Instant payments continue to provide a huge contribution to cashless payments in Serbia. The number of instant payments increased in Q3 2023 by 3.6 million or 27.33% from the same period a year earlier. Citizens make instant payments using the services provided by the NBS IPS system. The average daily number of these payments came at 182,030 in Q3, exceeding the figure from a year ago by almost 40 thousand.

Apart from making instant credit transfers to any payee with a current account in a bank, the NBS IPS payment system enables the following:

  • payment of monthly bills for utility and other services by scanning the unique NBS IPS QR code printed on the bill/invoice;
  • payment at brick-and-mortar and online points-of-sale using the IPS Scan and IPS Show options;
  • payment by IPS Scan at online points-of-sale, where payment is executed via deep link technology in just a few clicks;  
  • payment using the Transfer service – a designated payee’s code, i.e. mobile phone number;
  • the Generator/Validator services which enable generation (technical preparation) and validation (technical verification) of the NBS IPS QR code.

Citizens rely more and more on mobile banking applications, and especially on the Transfer service, for which more than 300,000 users were registered at the end of Q3 2023. Registration for the service is very simple and can be done quickly within the mobile banking application itself. For more information about the registration method and other advantages, visit the NBS website, section It’s good to know – Transfer service.

For accurate and up-to-date information on instant payments and the advantages of this state-of-the-art and fastest type of payment, take a look at the IPS (Instant Payments Serbia) website.

A graphic overview of data on the provision of payment services and the issuance of e-money for Q3 2023 is available on the NBS website, section for payment system statistics.

Payment System Department