The presentation of new payments system project “RTGS” and “Securities Settlement” system was held at National Bank of Georgia on 17th of December.

The Ambassador of United States Mr. John Bass, the Vice-President of Montran – Charles Walsh, the senior advisor of Bloomberg in CIS and Georgia – John Pang, the advisor of National Bank from US Treasury David Culppeper, the representatives of banking association and commercial banks attended the presentation.

The president of NBG Mr. Giorgi Kadagidze opened the presentation: “Together with the Ambassador of US we have signed a grant agreement last year in May, by which NBG received finance from USAID for implementing several systems. Our plan was seen to be ambitious and optimistic – to start implementing such high scale projects and to change the settlement and payment systems extremely. But here is the result, the new system is officially went live, we moved to modern governing system, high-tech model, the managing of operations has become quicker and riskless – it means that cash circulation is well protected and safe. Apart from these, any transaction, related to securities settlement, instead of paper document circulation will be made electronically in a few minutes from now on. Entire system provides immediate, secure and continuous interbank transfers -  all these will result in supplying effective services to Georgian banking sector participants and ultimately to their customers,"-stated Giorgi Kadagidze.

NBG started the development of the project in 2007 with the support of USAID. The project is being developed by worldwide American company – Montran, which is specialized in implementing modern payment systems. Montran has already implemented similar projects at 27 countries around the world. The countries are following: Israel, Romania, Bulgaria, Iran etc. A Real-Time Gross Settlement System is a payment system in which the processing and settlement take place continuously ("in real time") rather than in batch processing mode. Like this, transactions can be settled with immediate finality.

"New RTGS and Securities Settlement system which went live in National Bank of Georgia is very important fact, that will support financial system to be more protected and the system will help Georgia to become more integrated in international economic base.  We are happy to have a great opportunity to help Georgia in integration process at western economic and financial markets,”- stated an ambassador of the US John Bass at today’s event.