with gross balance sheet value of deferred loan payments of over bgn 9 billion, which is a significant financial relief for the affected companies and households. the tasks related to the mitigation of covid - 19 consequences for banks and their customers involved a considerable effort on our part. nevertheless, we managed to make arrangements and provide a significant contribution for the completion of the strategic task of membership of the bulgarian lev in erm ii and accession of our country to the single supervisory mechanism, by establishing close cooperation of the bulgarian national bank with the european central bank. as a result of joining the single supervisory mechanism, our country also joined the single resolution mechanism. from 1 october 2020, the european central bank exercises direct supervision over five bulgarian significant credit institutions, and the single resolution board assumed the function of a resolution authority for these institutions and for all cross - border groups. owing to the good preparation effort, the transition to the new supervisory regime was smooth, without any turbulence for the banks and their customers. 1 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches therefore, the answer to the first question is that up to now we have been successfully performing both the emergency tasks caused by the pandemic and the strategic tasks facing the banking sector. the banker ’ s day is a good opportunity for us to mention the contribution and to commend on and give recognition to all our colleagues for having a banking sector that is just as strong and supportive of companies, households and the entire economy, with a preserved general financial stability in the country. the more important question for us now is what lies ahead? there is no easy answer to this question because of the development of the crisis which makes it much more uncertain in terms of parameters as compared with previous historical periods of economic and financial turmoil. the second wave of rapid spread of covid - 19 and the new phase of the restrictive measures are once again challenging a number of sectors. the condition of the banks which perform the financial intermediation function is of key importance for the whole economy. this accounts for the bulgarian national bank ’ s enormous responsibility for the fulfilment of the mandate entrusted to us by law and specifically for maintaining the stability of the banking system. this requires that we stay traditionally focused on the high capital and liquidity requirements for banks. these requirements are not ends in themselves, but follow from the need for banks to have reserves at hand. on the one hand, the reserves allow them to absorb costs and losses arising from the worsened quality of assets

from convenience, this leads to a significant increase in the security of the payment process, allowing the use of biometric data for customer identification. on the occasion of the forthcoming review of the second payment services directive, a comprehensive assessment of the impact of strong customer authentication on the level of payment fraud is to be carried out. opportunities are also being explored for the use of electronic identification and certificate - based solutions to meet the requirements for strong customer authentication at account login and initiation of payment transactions. mobile technologies with the advancement of technologies, the smartphone is being established as an increasingly universal tool capable of combining a wide variety of functions. nowadays the smartphone is also 1 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches becoming a tool for initiating payments. this is possible thanks to services like digitalisation of payment cards, the use of digital wallets, and mobile banking applications. in recent years, work has been done towards the potential use of smartphones as devices for receiving physical card payments. this has become possible due to technical 2 these standards1 developed by the payment card industry security standards council. standards allow the use of nfc - enabled mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, for accepting contactless payments and also for the payer to enter a pin code on the screen of the mobile device. thus, mobile devices are becoming a sort of software pos terminals capable of accepting payments with payment cards and other payment instruments integrated into the mobile phone. we also already have payment service providers that offer this software pos service. this will make contactless payments easier and more convenient to the customers and merchants in bulgaria. another new possibility is a payment transfer via telephone conducted between accounts with payment service providers where a mobile telephone number is indicated instead of an account number, based on a technology that allows linking the telephone number to the iban account number. this service is also already offered on the bulgarian market. all this follows the trend of increased usage of mobile payment solutions in europe. open banking the new payment initiation and account information services, regulated by the second payment services directive, create conditions for implementing the so - called ‘ open banking ’. this allows the entry of new participants in the payments market and the development of innovative services as well as value - added customer solutions. in order to comply with the regulatory requirements, the banks in europe, including those in bulgaria, preferred to choose the development of dedicated interfaces, known as ‘ application programming interfaces ’ or ‘ apis ’, to the possibility of modifying their client interfaces for access