Latest payments News: Serbia’s Plans For Crypto Surveillance System Aim To Prevent Abuses And Tackle Money Laundering, and more

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Serbia’s Plans For Crypto Surveillance System Aim To Prevent Abuses And Tackle Money Laundering

EU accession pressure is one of the key drivers of the initiative, as the country seeks to position itself as a credible, well-regulated market, although some commentators have expressed concerns about the adequacy of privacy protections.

In October 2025, the Serbian Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering (APML) launched a competitive bidding procedure to establish a real-time crypto-tracking system intended to support anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) efforts.

The tender specified that the new platform is to monitor trading activities on major blockchain networks involving Serbian residents, aiming to provide the regulator with detailed insights into potentially suspicious fund flows, thereby clarifying its operational scope and purpose.

The system will gather public information from the blockchain, monitor networks and apply network analytics to enable analysts to identify the possible owner of a wallet and determine their identity, possibly through exchanges or custodians.

The official deadline to submit bids for this tender was November 10, 2025. The timeline for the introduction of the new system has not been finalised, so market participants should monitor official announcements.

The crypto-tracking system will monitor transactions across the ten largest cryptocurrencies and stablecoins by trading volume: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), BNB, Dogecoin (DOGE), XRP, Sui (SUI), Tether’s USDT, Circle’s USDC and First Digital USD (FDUSD).

According to Gurcan Partners, a Belgrade-based law firm, the regulator wants real-time insight into crypto transactions, especially when funds move from exchanges to self-hosted wallets.

“The goal is to close the current visibility gap, fully align with FATF standards, and demonstrate that Serbia takes financial integrity as seriously as the EU,” the firm stated.

“It's not about restricting legal use of crypto, but about preventing abuses and positioning Serbia as a credible, well-regulated market”.

No Structural Conflict Between EU’s AI Act And Existing Regulation, EBA Concludes

The regulator’s finding that only limited friction exists between new artificial intelligence (AI) obligations and established banking and payments rules paves the way for coordinated oversight as implementation begins.

In November, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published the results of a mapping exercise comparing obligations under the EU’s AI Act with requirements arising from existing sector-specific financial services legislation.

The review centred on AI systems classified as “high-risk” under Sections 5 (b) and (c) of Annex III of the AI Act.

These include AI models used for credit scoring and creditworthiness assessments, as well as those supporting risk assessments and pricing in life and health insurance.

Taking into account key regulations such as the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), the study found “no significant contradictions” between the AI Act and these other frameworks.

“The AI Act is complementary to EU banking and payment sector legislation, which already provides a comprehensive framework to manage risks,” said the EBA.

The authority cautioned that firms will still need to invest effort in aligning and integrating the various frameworks in practice.

The EBA’s mapping exercise examined how key AI Act obligations interact with, and could be integrated into, firms’ existing regulatory duties.

Topics assessed included quality management, serious-incident reporting, the consumer’s right to an explanation, risk-management processes, technical documentation, record-keeping and human oversight.

The regulator found that most requirements for high-risk systems under the AI Act are either “fully aligned”, “partially aligned” or “complementary” with the requirements of other sectoral legislation.

In the mapping exercise, a “fully aligned” interaction was defined as one where the AI Act obligation is “substantively identical” to requirements under EU financial services legislation.

Only one interaction scored “fully aligned”: the interaction between the consumer’s right to explanation under both the AI Act and the Consumer Credit Directive (CCD).

Most remaining interactions were classed as “partially aligned” or “complementary”. Roughly a third were left unrated due to an absence of comparable provisions.

Eurosystem’s Pilot Plan Offers PSPs A Strategic Role In Shaping The Digital Euro

By inviting payment service providers (PSPs) to participate in a 12-month trial to assess the operational readiness of the digital euro, the authority is giving them insight into its functionality and the chance to influence its further development.

Under the plan, selected PSPs will collaborate with the Eurosystem, which comprises the European Central Bank (ECB) and the national central banks of the 20 EU member states that use the euro, to develop and test pilot payment use cases.

The pilot will involve real-world transactions between individuals and businesses using a digital payment instrument issued by the Eurosystem. Although designed to replicate the digital euro’s features, it will not constitute legal tender.

The trial will cover person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-business (P2B) transactions, both online and offline, allowing PSPs to test a full spectrum of payment scenarios.

Selected PSPs will include both distributing and acquiring providers; organisations may apply as either or both.

The pilot is set to last for 12 months and is intended to test the technical, functional and operational readiness of the digital euro.

Announcing the pilot activities, the Eurosystem said they would “play a key role in preparing Europe’s payment ecosystem for the possible introduction of the digital euro. They will provide a valuable learning experience, helping to further improve the digital euro’s functionalities, usability and technical design.”

In pursuing the digital euro, the EU is attempting to modernise the payments system through digital assets and give consumers in the euro area access to a secure, resilient public digital payment option.

This reflects a strategic push to enhance monetary sovereignty and modernise retail payments.

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