Dear Customer,

According to Decree No. 35/2017. (XII. 14.) of the National Bank of Hungary (MNB) on execution of payment transactions, beginning from March 2, 2020, domestic payments can be transferred 24 hours a day, 7 days a week as instant credit transfers, and will be credited to the beneficiary’s bank within a few seconds. The credited funds will be immediately available to the beneficiary.

The preconditions of an instant credit transfer order are the following:
a) Initiated from an account nominated in HUF (Hungarian Forint),
b) Payment currency is HUF (Hungarian Forint),
c) Its amount does not exceed 10 million HUF (Hungarian Forint),
d) Payment order is a single credit transfer (not batch, group or standing) order,
e) It does not specify a debit date other than the date of submission,
f) It is submitted via an electronic banking channel (Electra in case of Commerzbank).

Starting from March 2, 2020 customers of Commerzbank Zrt. can use the electronic banking system Electra to initiate instant payments 24/7, from any available open HUF (Hungarian Forint) account to any Hungarian bank account, including their own accounts. Credit transfer orders fulfilling the above mentioned criteria will be treated as instant payment orders and will be automatically processed through the instant payment channel, while payment orders that do not meet these criteria will be executed according to the rules for intraday settlement. The Electra system shall immediately inform the customer in a direct message about the success of the payment order, or in the instance of failure about the reason for rejection.

The introduction of instant payments does not affect the transactions fees payable to the bank, for these transactions the outgoing payment fees for domestic HUF transactions will apply.

Please note that instant credit transfers received by our bank for the benefit of one of your accounts will always be credited to your HUF (Hungarian Forint) account, in accordance with section 3.9.2 of the General Business Terms and Conditions for Payment Services of Commerzbank Zrt. If you would like to execute currency conversions between your accounts where the HUF (Hungarian Forint) account is debited, the order must be issued as a foreing currency payment in the Electra system.

Starting from March 2, 2020 customers of Commerzbank Zrt. can use the electronic banking system Electra to initiate instant payments 24/7, from any available open HUF (Hungarian Forint) account to any Hungarian bank account, including their own accounts. Credit transfer orders fulfilling the above mentioned criteria will be treated as instant payment orders and will be automatically processed through the instant payment channel, while payment orders that do not meet these criteria will be executed according to the rules for intraday settlement. The Electra system shall immediately inform the customer in a direct message about the success of the payment order, or in the instance of failure about the reason for rejection.

The introduction of instant payments does not affect the transactions fees payable to the Bank, for these transactions the outgoing payment fees for domestic HUF transactions will apply.

Please note that instant credit transfers received by Commerzbank for the benefit of one of your accounts will always be credited to your HUF (Hungarian Forint) account, in accordance with section 3.9.2 of the General Business Terms and Conditions for Payment Services of Commerzbank Zrt. If you would like to execute currency conversions between your accounts where the HUF (Hungarian Forint) account is debited, the order must be issued as a foreing currency payment in the Electra system.

It will also be possible to track balance changes resulting from instant credit transfers outside standard business hours by using the balance query function in Electra.

A new functionality of the instant payment system is the introduction of secondary account identifiers. The secondary account identifier can be registered personally in our bank, or in the Electra system - provided that the user possesses the necessary authorisation -, and is used to identify the account holder’s payment account.
The account holder may specify as secondary account identifier:
- Tax number (for non natural persons) or tax identification code,
- Mobile phone number (with country code indicating an EEA state as a geographical area)
- E-mail address.

If you assign a secondary account identifier to your bank account, then in the future your partners may use it for payments up to an amount of 10 million HUF instead of your regular account number. For more details on the registration please contact us.

The introduction of instant payments also affects the account statements available in the electronic banking systems. We will inform our customers of those changes in a separate letter.

If you have any questions please contact your account manager who will be happy to assist you.

Kind regards,

Commerzbank Zrt.

February 10, 2020, Budapest