What happened
- Specific facts/numbers: The Central Bank of Iceland is preparing infrastructure for account-to-account payments for goods and services; its existing interbank system routes payments of less than 30 million krónur through the retail component EXP, while large-value payments of 30 million krónur or more go through RTGS.
- Institutions involved: The Central Bank of Iceland is the lead institution, with banks and payment service providers expected to use the new rails; the initiative sits within the bank’s payments and financial market infrastructure remit.
- Regulatory/technical context: Iceland’s central bank says it is legally tasked with promoting a safe, effective financial system and already owns and operates parts of the interbank payment infrastructure. A recent central-bank presentation said cards account for 99% of point-of-sale payments and that there is no widely used A2A solution in stores, creating concentration and resilience concerns.
- What to watch next: Watch for a formal central-bank announcement on design, governance and participant access for the new retail A2A scheme; no next milestone was identified in the material reviewed.
Why it matters
A domestic A2A option could give Icelandic merchants and consumers a fallback payment channel if global card networks or connectivity are disrupted.
HKMA Relevance
Direct: Another central bank is taking a concrete payments-infrastructure step in the retail payments and resilience area, which falls within the HKMA’s own remit.