legal entities ( 29 % ). the latter initiated 51 % of the credit transfer in an electronic way, while the households initiated electronically only 20 % of their credit transfers in 2017. the companies usually initiate their payments by using computers, while households rely mainly on computers ( 92 % of electronic credit transfers ), mobile phones ( 7 % of electronic credit transfers ) and atm ( 1 % of electronic credit transfers ). in comparative context with the eu members, we are lagging behind given that 91 % of credit transfers were electronically initiated in the old eu members and 86 % in the new eu member countries in 2016. regarding digital channels used for ordering goods and services, internet shoppers in macedonia increased by 5 p. p. during the last five years and reached 15 % of the population that used internet in 2017. this is quite below the 57 % of internet shoppers in the eu in 2017, according to the eurostat. internet shopping is becoming popular among all age groups, but the young internet users have the highest share of online shoppers among internet users. in addition, the development of fintech companies is expected in the coming period through further liberalization of payment transactions and the further trend of opening of the information systems of the banks towards this type of companies. 1 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches the absence of liberalization in payments industry can be treated as a factor that in a sense constrained digitalization in macedonia in the past. this is expected to change with the new law on payment services and systems which isunder procedure implementing psd2, pad, e - money 2, settlement finality directive, ifr provisions and some provisions of regulation on credit transfers and direct debit. the new law is expected to provide more stimulating environment for financial innovations allowing for new entrants to the market with innovative payments solutions, while establishing standards that will enhance the security and consumer protection. financial regulation – how to promote safe and secure financial innovations a sound legal framework is important for private service providers to develop secure and efficient payment services and for authorities to keep the confidence of users in the regular functioning of the payment system. the development of payment services is a continuously evolving dynamic process, driven by technological advances. market players design new services that better adapt to users ’ needs in order to expand their business. in doing so, they try to balance the new opportunities the market opens up with the financial regulation they have to comply with. however, private players want to maximize their profits and may not have the right

dlt is that many central bank - operated wholesale payment systems are at the end of their technological life cycles. the systems are programmed in obsolete languages or use database designs that are no longer fit for purpose and are costly to maintain. project jasper at the bank of canada ( chapman et al ( 2017 ) ) and project ubin at the monetary authority of singapore ( mas ( 2017 ) ) and stella – a joint research project of the european central bank and the bank of japan simulate real - time gross settlement systems ( rtgs ) on a dlt platform. the two projects jasper and ubin show that central bank money can be transferred on a distributed ledger in real time, in realistic volumes. nevertheless, none of the current initiatives to update or replace existing wholesale payment systems are considering the adoption of dlt. the ecb and the boj, in their role as operators of important market infrastructures services, decided to conduct in - depth experiments to determine whether specific existing functionalities of their respective payment systems could run in a dlt environment. findings in relation to efficiency show that, with regard to the specific aspects of rtgs services tested to date, a dltbased solution could meet the performance needs of current large value payment systems. in conclusion, this joint effort of ecb and the boj has produced a thorough set of results that provide reasons to be optimistic with respect to the capabilities of dlt within payment systems. it is, however, important to bear in mind that this work has been conducted in a test environment ; therefore, any assumptions regarding the capacity for dlt to be used in production should not be made from this report. both, the bank of england ( 2017 ) and bank of canada ( ho, 2017 ) ) conclude that dlt is not yet mature enough for current adoption. yet most central banks that are considering modernizing their core payment infrastructure stress the need to make new systems inter - operable with future dlt platforms. looking beyond the immediate horizon, many industry participants see significant potential for dlt to increase efficiency and reduce reconciliation costs in securities clearing and settlement. one potential benefit of dlt - based structures is immediate clearing and settlement of securities, in contrast to the multiple - day lags that currently exist when exchanging cash for securities ( and vice versa ). progress in this direction was recently achieved by a joint venture between the deutsche bundesbank and deutsche borse, which developed a functional prototype of a dlt based securities settlement platform that achieves delivery -