Regulatory Alerts2025-01-01
Mandatory Use of the Montran Gateway on the Zambia Interbank Payment and Settlement System
The Bank of Zambia mandates that all commercial banks utilize the Montran Gateway for transmitting payment messages to the Zambia Interbank Payment and Settlement System (ZIPSS) starting February 8, 2025. This requirement establishes a secure secondary messaging channel alongside SWIFT to enhance operational resilience and support extended operating hours. Failure to process transactions through the gateway will trigger regulatory action, confirming participant readiness for live environment operations.
[Logo: Bank of Zambia]
Bank of Zambia OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY GOVERNOR - OPERATIONS
BOZ/EXEC/DG/psd/bp
January 13, 2025
Circular No. : 04/2025
To : All Heads of Commercial Bank
MANDATORY USE OF THE MONTRAN GATEWAY ON THE ZAMBIA INTERBANK PAYMENT AND SETTLEMENT SYSTEM
As part of the upgrade of the Zambia Interbank Payment and Settlement System (ZIPSS) to the ISO 20022 messaging standard which went live on October 14, 2023, the Montran Gateway was implemented as a secondary payment messaging channel, to the traditional messaging channel, Swift. This was aimed at enhancing the operational resilience of the system in the event of the primary messaging channel becoming unavailable. Further, the implementation of a secondary payment messaging channel will also support extended operating hours on the ZIPSS. The Montran Gateway provides a secure messaging channel through the Virtual Private Network (VPN) using either the File or Message Queue (MQ) based options which have been tested successfully by all the participants.
In view of the above, all commercial banks will be required to utilize the Montran Gateway for sending payment messages to the Live Environment of the ZIPSS on Saturday, February 8, 2025. The objective of the exercise is to confirm that participants can utilize the Montran Gateway to process transactions. Please find attached a guide to the use of the Montran Gateway.
Failure to process transactions using the Montran Gateway will attract regulatory action.
Kindly be guided accordingly.
[Signature]
Francis Chipimo (PhD) DEPUTY GOVERNOR
cc Deputy Governor – Administration Director – Payment Systems Director – Financial Markets Director – Prudential Supervision Director – Risk and Compliance Director – Information and Communications Technology Director – Financial Stability Director – Banking and Currency
Bank Square, Cairo Road, P.O. Box 30080, Lusaka, Zambia Tel:+260-211-399303, 399300, E-mail: dgo@boz.zm. Web: http://www.boz.zm