The Dominican Republic: Towards a New Instant Payment System
Posted on Apr 25, 2025 by Ángel González Tejada, Director, Payment Systems Department, Central Bank of the Dominican Republic
The Central Bank of the Dominican Republic (BCRD) is preparing to promote a new stage in the modernization of the Dominican Republic's Payment and Securities Settlement System (SIPARD) through the implementation of an instant payment system that will promote electronic payments in the Dominican Republic, as well as foster financial inclusion and bancarization.
Present Context
The Dominican Republic is one of the fastest-growing economies in Latin America in recent decades, with a growth rate of 5.0% by 2024, well above the regional average of 2.5%. It also shows a marked price stability at year-end 2024, with inflation of 3.35%, within the target range of 4% ± 1.0%, as a result of the implementation of sound monetary, exchange rate and financial policies, as well as an adequate fiscal policy and a strong private sector, which have allowed the country to rank among the seven largest economies in the region.1
The most dynamic economic sectors in the Dominican Republic are tourism, free trade zones and construction, the first two together with mining, remittances and foreign direct investment are the largest generators of foreign exchange. Not to mention the important participation of agricultural exports such as cocoa and tobacco, considered among the best in the world for their quality.
The Dominican Republic is one of the main tourist destinations in the region, with 11.2 million visitors in 2024, second only to Mexico in Latin America and well ahead of other countries with larger territories such as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Peru.
Within this context of economic growth and price stability, the BCRD has played a leading role, based on the fulfillment of its objectives of ensuring price stability, guaranteeing the regulation of the financial system and being the issuing entity, as well as promoting the efficiency and security of the payment systems. Precisely, in the interest of meeting the latter objective, it has promoted initiatives for the modernization of the Dominican Republic's Payment and Securities Settlement System (SIPARD).
In this regard, between 2006 and 2013, with the support of the World Bank, financial system entities and other supervisors, the BCRD implemented a profound reform of SIPARD in the legal, operational and technological areas, which enabled the country to adopt new regulations on payment systems, streamline operating processes and have a real-time settlement platform.
As part of this wave of reforms, the Payment Systems Regulation[2] was issued, which establishes the legal regime and procedures applicable to SIPARD, as well as other regulations that contributed to providing greater certainty and legal security to payment and securities settlement systems. These regulations have undergone subsequent modifications to update them in accordance with the innovations that have arisen in relation to payment systems.
Likewise, a real-time gross settlement system (RTGS system)[3] was implemented, which became the platform for concentrating the settlement of the operations of all payment systems operating in the country and the operations of entities in the banking, social security and securities sectors.
In addition ...
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