The National Bank of Moldova said Gov. Anca Dragu took part in the 2026 International Monetary Fund and World Bank Constituency meeting in Varna, Bulgaria, where she used a plenary session on digital transformation to set out the central bank’s view that financial sector digitalisation is a tool for resilience, broader access to financial services and closer integration with the European Union. Her intervention focused on payment infrastructure reform, continued alignment with EU standards and a cautious approach to artificial intelligence in central banking. Dragu highlighted the national instant payments system MIA, launched in March 2024, as a key step in modernising Moldova’s payments infrastructure. She also pointed to Moldova’s connection to the Single Euro Payments Area in October 2025, which reduced the cost of EUR transfers and strengthened financial links with the EU. The bank’s stated priorities for the next phase of digitalisation are further development of instant payments, strengthening the open banking framework, remote identification and secure customer authentication, and alignment with EU rules on digital operational resilience. On artificial intelligence, she said the central bank is developing internal tools for knowledge management, document processing, anonymisation, summarisation and translation, while applying a human-in-the-loop approach rather than treating AI as a substitute for human judgment.
National Bank of Moldova2026-06-19
National Bank of Moldova outlines payments digitalisation and prudent AI use at IMF World Bank Constituency meeting
The National Bank of Moldova used the IMF and World Bank Constituency meeting in Varna to outline its digital finance agenda, linking payment modernisation to resilience, financial access and EU integration. It highlighted the MIA instant payments system and Moldova’s October 2025 connection to SEPA, and said further work will focus on open banking, remote identification, digital resilience rules and tightly controlled internal AI tools.