2023-03-01
In 2022, the number of payments made through the Bank of Lithuania’s CENTROlink payment system increased by 1.5 times, the number of instant payments more than doubled, and the value of all payments grew by one third.
“The number of instant payments is rapidly approaching half of all payments made through CENTROlink. This shows that consumers are increasingly using modern payment services and the market is rapidly growing. The Bank of Lithuania will continue to innovate to make payments even more convenient for both residents and businesses,” says Tomas Karpavičius, Acting Director of the Market Infrastructure Department of the Bank of Lithuania.
In 2022, more than 276.3 million payments (186.1 million in 2021) with the value of €476.7 billion (€358.2 billion in 2021) were made through CENTROlink. The volume of payments made by financial institutions already operating in the system increased.
In 2022, the number of instant payments through CENTROlink bounced from 63.4 million to 128.1 million with the value going up from €77.5 billion to €137.6 billion year on year. At the end of 2022, 64 payment service providers from Lithuania and the European Economic Area (EEA) provided instant payment services to their customers.
The expansion of instant payments is also supported by the Proxy Lookup Service (PLS) provided by the Bank of Lithuania. It allows initiating payments according to the mobile phone number of the beneficiary of funds, by linking it to an account. To transfer money, one only needs to select the recipient from the contact list on their mobile app or enter the payee’s phone number. So far, this service has been provided by two banks in Lithuania and was used by 530,000 users at the end of 2022.
Given the market needs, the Bank of Lithuania is considering the possibility to supplement the CENTROlink system with a new request-to-pay functionality. It would enable one to conveniently confirm, postpone or reject payments for services received, goods purchased and to make other payments from one’s account in real time.
Today, CENTROlink services are used by nearly 150 payment service providers from 19 EEA countries. The Ministry of Finance, which is implementing the Treasury Single Account Information System project, plans to join CENTROlink in the second quarter of this year. This will make it possible to execute State Treasury payments more quickly and efficiently and to provide payment infrastructure access tools to other system participants.
The access to the Bank of Lithuania’s payment system is granted only to financial institutions ensuring high quality and compliance standards and the activities, related risks and reputation of which are thoroughly assessed on a regular basis. Eleven new financial institutions were granted access last year, and six applications were rejected.
Additional information
CENTROlink is a payment system operated by the Bank of Lithuania which provides technical access to the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and TARGET2 settlement system via the Bank of Lithuania’s infrastructure for payment service providers – banks, credit unions, electronic money and payment institutions – licensed in the EEA. After connecting to CENTROlink, they can offer instant payments 24/7/365, as well as standard credit transfers and direct debit services.
