Ukraine to Join the European Payment System
4/30/2025
The government has approved the draft Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to Certain Laws of Ukraine to Ensure Compliance with European Union Law and the Relevant Criteria Established by the European Payments Council for Ukraine’s Accession to the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).”
The purpose of the draft law is to align Ukrainian legislation on anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing with EU law, which is a mandatory condition for Ukraine to submit an official application to join SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area).
Ukraine’s accession to SEPA will enable citizens and businesses to make euro transfers between European countries extremely quickly, without additional fees and under clearly established rules.
The draft law provides for:
- The creation of a Register of Accounts and Individual Bank Safes of individuals;
- The creation of a Register of Ultimate Beneficial Owners of trusts or other similar legal entities, administered by the State Tax Service (DPS);
- Improvement of the procedure for verifying information about the ultimate beneficial owners of legal entities, and the mechanism for applying sanctions for failure to submit, late submission, or knowingly submitting false information to the Unified State Register;
- The introduction of effective sanctions for violations of financial monitoring legislation by primary financial monitoring entities, in line with EU requirements for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing;
- The establishment of a whistleblower mechanism in the field of financial monitoring and their protection;
- Expansion of the list of primary financial monitoring entities – in particular, including trustees of trusts and dealers of cultural assets who conduct transactions through “free ports” for amounts exceeding 400,000 UAH;
- Prevention of criminals or their accomplices from managing and/or controlling specially designated primary financial monitoring entities.