Fintech & digital payments rules in Moldova (2026)

Law 114/2012 establishes licensing for payment institutions, e-money institutions and postal operators; the National Bank of Moldova licenses, regulates and oversees these providers and maintains public registers of licensed entities (and of withdrawn/suspended licenses).

Law 209/2022 amended Law 114/2012 to transpose EU Directive 2015/2366 (PSD2), phased in across 2022 (prudential supervision), 2023 (process adjustments) and August 2024 (strong customer authentication, open banking and new services); the original 2012 law already implemented EU Directives 2007/64/EC and 2009/110/EC.

A national Open Banking standard (based on the Berlin Group NextGenPSD2 standard) requires licensed payment service providers to expose dedicated APIs to authorized third parties; account information service providers (AISPs) and payment initiation service providers (PISPs) may operate after registering with the NBM and meeting regulatory conditions.

The NBM launched the MIA instant payments system on 12 March 2024 (P2P, request-to-pay and QR), extending to business payments (P2B, July 2024), government payments (P2G, July 2025) and B2B transfers (March 2026); adoption reached roughly half of bank-account holders.

Moldova officially joined the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) on 6 March 2025, allowing its banks to adopt SEPA credit transfer schemes and integrate with the EU payments architecture.

No dedicated BNPL/consumer buy-now-pay-later licensing framework was identified; such activity would fall under general payment, lending and consumer-credit rules rather than a standalone regime — a gap relative to the otherwise PSD2-aligned payments framework.