PRESS RELEASE
Decisions by the Supervisory Council, 4 May 2022

On 4 May 2022, the Supervisory Council of the Bank of Albania  decided to keep the policy rate unchanged at 1.0%, and the overnight deposit and overnight lending rates, at 0.1% and 1.9%, respectively.

In addition to this Decision, the Supervisory Council of the Bank of Albania reviewed and decided to:

• Approve the regulation "On the Structure and the Use of the International Bank Account Number"

This regulation is a reviewed version of the current regulation on the IBAN number, in implementation of the "National Retail Payments Strategy (2018-2023)", "Medium-term development strategy of the Bank of Albania for 2019-2021" and meeting the needs for improvement according to international best practices.

The Law on "Payment Services" enables payment service providers to open payment accounts, issue payment instruments and potentially to be participants in a clearing system for small value payments (AECH). For this reason, depending on the activity, financial institutions can provide their clients with a payment account number. This account number must be subject to the same standardization and regularity as the IBAN format used so far in the context of the bank account number. Through this regulation, its meaning and use will be extended to all payment accounts generated by payment service providers for their customers.

The Supervisory Council was also informed on the daily functional and operational activities of the Bank of Albania.