The National Bank of Moldova published its 2024 report on the evolution of the country’s financial market infrastructures, compiling licensing, regulatory and supervisory activity for payment service providers and electronic money issuers and summarising monitoring results for payment infrastructures and instruments. The report sets out the timeline for Moldova’s accession to the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), including submission of the application dossier to the European Payments Council on 30 January 2024, completion of the EPC’s assessment with a positive conclusion in early August 2024, and Moldova’s acceptance into SEPA on 6 March 2025. It also reviews the rollout of the National Bank-created MIA instant payments solution launched on 12 March 2024, starting with functionality for individuals (P2P and RTP) and later expanded by PSPs with central bank support to include Me2Me transfers, QR code/link payments for businesses, and RTP payments to legal entities. On the regulatory side, the National Bank finalised nine secondary legal acts in 2024, including rules on strong customer authentication and secure communication standards, audit requirements and approval criteria for auditors of non-bank PSPs, and a monitoring regulation that gives legal force to international oversight principles and sets detailed requirements for FMI administrators, payment scheme governance bodies, participants and PSPs placing or accepting payment instruments. Key metrics cited include SAPI processing 18.8 million transactions worth MDL 1,635.4 billion in 2024, MIA instant payments processing 3.2 million transactions worth MDL 3.15 billion from launch to 31 December 2024 with 99.9 per cent availability and no major incidents, a 14.0 per cent increase in payment cards in circulation, a 34.4 per cent rise in domestic-issued card cashless payments, and a 17.3 per cent increase in holders of remote-access electronic payment instruments.

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