Ukraine's central bank tightens rules for handling cash

According to the document, non-bank financial institutions and banks' agents are obliged to use such accounts for cash hryvnias accepted for further transfers, it said.

The adopted decision will ensure transparency of such operations and will help avoid risks of using received cash in shadow schemes.

The regulator says this procedure is consistent with European Union Directive 2015/2366 on payment services in the internal market on part of payment accounts used exclusively for payment transactions.

Read alsoUkraine's central bank: State price regulations may help curb inflationIn particular, the Directive says that "to safeguard all funds which have been received from the payment service users or through another payment service provider for the execution of payment transactions, funds shall not be commingled at any time with the funds of any natural or legal person other than payment service users on whose behalf the funds are held and, where they are still held by the payment institution and not yet delivered to the payee or transferred to another payment service provider by the end of the business day following the day when the funds have been received, they shall be deposited in a separate account in a credit institution or invested in secure, liquid low-risk assets as defined by the competent authorities."

The NBU also issued resolution No. 117 to introduce respective changes as of November 22 to banks' Charts of Accounts and the instruction how to apply them.

As UNIAN reported earlier, money transfers to Ukraine through money remittance systems in January-September 2017 were estimated at US$1.747 billion, which was eight times up on the amount transferred from the country for the same period to the tune of $207 million.