The National Bank of Ukraine is ending the period of limits on transfers from citizens’ bank cards. The limits came into effect on October 1, 2024 and will be canceled on March 31. At the same time, limits will be canceled for some users, and some did not have them at all. The deadline for limits on transfers from cards of individuals is stated in the NBU resolution, which was reported on the institution’s portal.
In resolution No. 102 dated August 27, 2022, the National Bank established a temporary limit on bank transfers from “card to card”, which are also called the abbreviations P2P (person-to-person) and C2C (consumer-to-consumer). According to the regulator’s decision, a restriction of 150 thousand was imposed on outgoing payments between accounts of individuals.
The National Bank portal has not yet published a new decision regarding transfer limits.
Transfer limits – details
The NBU explained that the resolution on transfer limits applied to all accounts of a client in one bank. No more than UAH 150,000 was allowed to be withdrawn to other people’s accounts during the month, the document said. The deadline for such restrictions is March 31, 2025, the resolution states.
There were categories of citizens who were not subject to restrictions:
for volunteers. In order for a bank to consider a person a volunteer, he must meet two of the five requirements. The resolution lists the requirements: registered as a volunteer, the collection is a typical activity, there is a letter from a military unit or government agency about the need for the collection, there is a letter explaining the purpose and amount of the collection, there is open information about volunteer activities on the network;
for people with monthly incomes higher than the limit;
for transfers between their own accounts;
for transfers of individuals;
for transfers using IBAN details.
The NBU’s decision explains why the transfer limits were introduced. It is stated that this way they solve the problem with “drops”, when a person gives access to his account to other persons and this is used in the “shadow business”. According to the regulator, 200 billion UAH per year circulates in the “shadow” in this way and the cards of 80 thousand Ukrainians are involved in this.
“The introduced six-month restriction period will be used to develop joint solutions aimed at solving this problem,” the National Bank explained the reason for the duration of the transfer limit from October 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025.
It should be noted that on February 3, People’s Deputy and Head of the Finance Committee of the Verkhovna Rada Danylo Hetmantsev spoke about the features of the limits on transfers of citizens from risk groups, introduced on February 1. According to the People’s Deputy, banks have undertaken to monitor the movement of funds in people’s accounts. If there are suspicions of legality, financial institutions must block the movement of money and ask the client about the origin of the funds. According to the relevant decision of the NBU, risky clients were divided into three groups, each of which will have its own restrictions.
