the digital finance package, part of which is the “ eu strategy for retail payments ” and the “ strategy for the digitalisation of eu financial services ". the aim of both strategies is to outline the medium - term guidelines and priorities for the development of digitalization in the financial sector. central to the payment strategy is immediate payments, executed within seconds, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, called the “ new rule ” in the strategy. bulgaria is not lagging behind these trends. the project of borika ad for immediate payments in bgn, based on the requirements of the sepa scheme for immediate credit transfers, is in an advanced stage of development. as an operator of the real - time gross settlement payment system ( rings ), the bnb assists in the implementation of the project. the company ’ s ambition is in 2021 for payment service providers in bulgaria to start providing their customers with immediate credit transfers in bgn. in order to develop innovative, affordable, secure and convenient payment solutions both in the online environment and in physical stores, it is important to provide an interoperable infrastructure that allows the smooth execution of cross - border immediate payments within the eu, as well as the achievement of additional standardization to ensure compatibility between final payment solutions offered to payment service users ( eg common standard for qr codes, provision of access to nfc chips in mobile phones, etc. ). these, as well as other aspects related to technological changes in the field of payments, including the risks arising from unregulated services, especially technical ones, which are ancillary to the provision of regulated payment services, i wish interesting and fruitful work to the participants in the videoconference. 1 opinion of the european banking authority on obstacles under article 32 ( 3 ) of the rts on sca and csc 2 / 2 bis central bankers'speeches

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