The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) is preparing a draft decision on the restriction of transfers and the introduction of maximum limits for card-to-card money transfers between individuals (also known as P2P transfers).
This was reported by representatives of the NBU at a meeting with the media, LIGA.net reports.
It is planned that the limits for weekend P2P transfers may be up to 100 000 hryvnias and 30 operations per month for one account.
The restriction, which will be based on the April decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) regarding the fight against illegal gambling business, is intended to be implemented within a month.
At the same time, they do not plan to limit incoming transactions, so as not to complicate the activities of, for example, volunteers. In addition, if there are reasons and confirmations, the limits may be increased, as an exception.
Also, as part of combating shadow payments, the regulator plans to introduce requirements for financial companies regarding the presence of authorized capital, which will be tied to the percentage of transactions from the amount of payments.
Why do they want to introduce restrictions?
According to the National Bank, the volume of shadow transfers can amount to billions of hryvnias. For this, in particular, cards of individuals are used, who deliberately provide their personal data to criminals for this purpose. Then, using the cards of pensioners or students with a monthly income of several thousand hryvnias, they can carry out unusual payment operations for millions of hryvnias per day.
Since the fall of 2023, the NBU has recorded an abnormal increase in the volume of p2p transfers across the system, as well as an increase in the number of cards from which such transfers are made, and the average transfer amounts to individual issuing banks. In particular, one of the largest issuing banks submitted information to the National Bank of Ukraine regarding the detected drops — more than 10 000 customers for October — December 2023 alone. Another bank discovered more than 4 000 compromised cards during the same period.
According to the estimates of CASE Ukraine analysts, the state loses roughly at least 100 billion hryvnias per year due to VAT schemes, counterfeiting, the gray market of excise goods, wages "in envelopes", etc.
In the future, after the change in legislation, it is possible to create registers of cards that were used for such cards with similar operations.