Payment services development: Montran

The development of instant payments ecosystems is crucial for facilitating financial inclusion, particularly in emerging markets. The connection of these systems is also starting to transform international transactions, by cutting costs and speeding fulfilment. US financial infrastructure provider Montran is playing an important role in assisting central banks in the transition to cutting-edge instant payments, working on 10 such vital systems in countries ranging from Angola to Panama.

The critical importance of instant payment systems was demonstrated in the past year in Palestine. Israeli bombardment resulted in the closure of bank branches, the destruction of infrastructure and interruption of electricity and communications in the Gaza Strip. There were also significant financial disturbances in the West Bank. Overall, millions of Palestinians faced extreme restrictions in cash usage and banking services.

The situation has changed markedly after the Palestine Monetary Authority pressed ahead to launch its iBuraq instant payments system – which complements its e-Sadad platform bill and service charges system – as an alternative to traditional cash and other payment services in 2024.

New York-headquartered Montran first forged relations with the PMA back in 2018, Fares Hindi, the PMA’s payments systems director, tells Central Banking. But the PMA only signed an agreement with the US financial market infrastructure company to establish instant payments in November 2022, with the testing, implementation, bank integration and launch of the iBuraq taking place last year.

The new instant payment system transacts in four currencies: the shekel; dinar; euro; and US dollar – Palestine does not have its own currency. Montran, Hindi says, offers a flexible, dynamic and adaptable system.

The Montran architecture underpinning iBuraq is ISO 20022 standardised. This adds flexibility as the data is richer and fuller, says Hindi. Montran also created strong oversight capabilities. “They monitor every single participant,” adds Hindi. “It’s a very, very sophisticated tool to monitor the participants around the clock.”

Hindi says his team can determine who is online, who is offline and review participants’ performance. He praises Montran’s encryption technology and the tokens utilised for login from a security perspective.

Consumers can use international bank account numbers for transfers, and create an alias linked to their phone number and account. QR codes can be utilised for both pre-defined payment and open-ended values. Consumers can send payment requests as well. They can also verify their beneficiary’s account before sending payment and view the exchange rate from the sender to the recipient. Single transactions are limited in value to $10,000 or the equivalent in euros, shekels or dinar. The daily limit is $30,000, and the monthly limit is $50,000.

A World Bank report published in February this year estimated around 98% of Gaza’s banking infrastructure was damaged by Israeli strikes, including 33 (of 56) bank branches destroyed and 19 more being at least partially damaged. Out of 94 ATMs functioning before the war, only two were still semi-functional, said the report. “The widespread damage of banking infrastructure and reduced liquidity in Gaza have halted access to financial services, worsening financial exclusion and limiting economic participation,” said the report. “This has deepened poverty and inequality, particularly among the most vulnerable populations.”

This damage has been mitigated to some extent by the introduction of instant payments. Hindi describes the impact of the establishment of the new iBuraq instant payments service as “huge”. “By the end of 2024, we were able to process 250,000 money transfers with a value of almost $65 million,” says Hindi. “If we did not have the instant payment system, it would have had to happen in cash… [but] in Gaza people do not have cash, meaning they depend totally on digital payments.”

Hindi says the number of transactions per hour jumped from 200 in November 2024 to 700 in February 2025, or around 17,000 transactions per day. Looking forward, Hindi says the PMA has begun work with Montran to transfer from a credit system to direct debits and will focus on using the QR in doing payments.

International footprint

While the foundation of Montran’s instant payment system (IPS) was laid in Romania in 2016, the system is designed for global deployment and supports diverse use cases, including credit transfers, requests to pay and bulk payments. “Since the first production launch in 2018, our IPS has achieved seven live installations, with three more in progress,” Keith Esca, global sales director at Montran, tells Central Banking.

Montran’s advanced IPS incorporates critical features such as a proxy alias module for streamlined customer look-up and a robust fraud management module to enhance security. Notably, between 2023 and 2024, Montran introduced QR code-based instant payment initiation, facilitating seamless transactions across a wide range of use cases, including person-to-person, person-to-merchant, business-to-business, government-to-person and request-to-pay.

Addressing critical risk management, Montran’s system mitigates credit and settlement risks by settling payments only against pre-funded amounts or collateral. “Our bulk payment flow simplifies participation in payment schemes by seamlessly migrating existing bulk clearing flows, with consolidated liquidity provisions covering both bulk and individual instant payments,” explains Ciprian Tesa, chief technology officer at Montran.

Engineered for optimal performance, Montran’s system operates on multiple hardware platforms and utilises a shared-nothing architecture, ensuring strong resilience and near-zero downtime. Leveraging representational state transfer API-backed interfaces, the system load balances requests across sites and supports diverse payment flows with tailored service-level agreements.

For indirect participation and varied payment flows, Montran’s IPS offers advanced limit management and pooled liquidity options.

Beyond core functionalities, Montran has significantly enhanced its ecosystem and overlay services, and achieved throughput volumes exceeding 5,000 payments per second. It has also made significant efforts to improve cross-border interoperability and connectivity. Montran also serves as the solution provider behind the Pan-African Payment & Settlement System (Papss). Another key achievement was the integration of Bulgaria’s system with the Eurosystem’s Target Instant Payment Settlement (Tips), enabling Bulgarian banks to facilitate instant euro payments domestically and internationally.

Vania Ganeva, director of payment services at Borica AD, the joint stock company licensed by the Bulgarian National Bank, underlines the importance and speed of Montran’s service. “The system uses a prepaid transaction processing model and has high availability and excellent performance, allowing us to process payments in much shorter time than required,” she tells Central Banking. “The service will be the basis for other value-added services such as payments via mobile phone number (P2P), parking, e-commerce and in-store. In the near future, the system should be integrated with other services to cover all the necessary flows.”

Looking ahead, Guatemala is poised to launch its Montran-powered instant payments service this year. Montran is also strategically targeting system upgrades and the replacement of first-generation payment systems worldwide, with a particular focus on Asia.

The Central Banking Awards 2025 were written by Christopher Jeffery, Daniel Hinge, Daniel Blackburn, Joasia Popowicz, Riley Steward, Jimmy Choi, Levente Koroes, Thomas Chow and Blake Evans-Pritchard.