The payment system in Romania: SENT and Transfond explained

With a value of over €300 billion in account-to-account payments per year in 2022 (the last available statistics), Romania is a serious player in the payment services field.

As a SEPA member, Romania's banks and financial institutions can offer SEPA payments for Euro payments. However, the SEPA schemes do not support Romania's official currency, the Romanian leu (RON).

The role of Transfond in Romania

Transfond is a major actor in Romania and plays a critical role in the country's financial ecosystem. Transfond aligns with European regulations and standards, ensuring seamless integration with the broader SEPA framework.

It owns and operates SENT (Sistemul Electronic de Transfer Național), the automated clearing house (ACH) responsible for processing interbank retail payments in Romania. It handles low-value transactions, including credit transfers, direct debits, and other payment instruments, excluding card payments.

SENT ensures the efficient and secure transfer of funds between participating financial institutions, facilitating smooth and efficient domestic and cross-border financial transactions within the SEPA framework.

• Operation hours: SENT operates on ReGIS, the domestic RTGS (real time gross settlement) system managed by the National Bank of Romania, and TARGET2 business days with three daily settlement sessions.

• Instant payments: Transfond also offers an Instant Payments service (Plăți Instant), which processes transactions within 10 seconds, available 24/7.

• SENT uses its own virtual network, TFDNet, to ensure communication between participants of the system, as well as security and confidentiality.
  

The Romanian schemes

Different schemes can be found in Romania.

Two domestic schemes to send and receive RON payments:

• MPC RON: credit transfers and direct debits in national currency

• IPC RON: instant credit transfers in national currency

Four SEPA schemes to send and receive Euro payments:

• SEPA credit transfer (SCT)

• SEPA instant credit transfer (SCT Inst)

• SEPA direct debit core (SDD core)

• SEPA direct debit B2B (SDD B2B)

Participants in the Romanian system

Transfond's system connects a wide range of financial institutions, including:

• Banks: Both domestic and international banks operating in Romania, enabling them to process electronic payments efficiently.

• Non-bank financial institutions: Payment service providers and other financial entities that are part of the payment ecosystem.

• Public sector: Including the Treasury and other government entities, facilitating public payments and receipts.

AliasPay: a new service for mobile payments

AliasPay enables seamless, 24/7/365 payments between bank accounts using only the recipient’s mobile phone number instead of an IBAN. It is one of the auxiliary applications of SENT.

Launched in 2020 by Transfond, the service connects phone numbers to bank accounts through a standardized proxy lookup (SPL), making payment initiation faster and simpler.

Consumers and businesses can access this feature through banks or payment providers participating in AliasPay. The service is a new step towards simplifying payments for end-users in Romania’s interbank system.

SANB: the Romanian confirmation of payee system

Launched in November 2022, the SANB (Confirmation of Payee) service helps prevent fraud by verifying the payee’s identity before or during payment initiation. It is also one of the auxiliary applications of SENT.

This feature displays the beneficiary’s name when entering the IBAN, enabling the payer to confirm if they are paying the correct party.

Developed by Transfond, SANB aims to reduce payment fraud risks, especially against invoice-related scams, and is available as an additional service for SEPA RON Credit Transfers.

Several Romanian banks, including Libra, ING, and CEC, have already implemented SANB for their consumers.

RoPay: a new strategy for retail

RoPay is Romania’s step towards aligning with the EU’s retail payment strategy, offering real-time payments via mobile devices.

Built on instant payment infrastructure and launched in 2019, RoPay supports a wide range of use cases—merchant, peer-to-peer, and e-commerce payments—using a standard QR code for easy payment initiation.

The service, available through mobile banking apps, benefits merchants with fast settlement (within 10 seconds), reduced costs, and real-time reconciliation. RoPay was approved by the National Bank of Romania in May 2024.

How Mambu Payments can help

Mambu Payments enables payment companies to integrate with local or pan-European banks via a single, modern API, unlocking fast time-to-market in Romania. For pan-European companies, Numeral also enables access to local and regional payment schemes, including SEPA, Bacs, FPS, and more, by connecting to leading banks across Europe via the same single API.

If you are looking to provide your customers with local Transfond payments, please contact us.