PayChat d.o.o. is a fintech startup that joined the joint initiative of Viber and the National Bank of Serbia, with the aim of developing a unique solution for simpler, faster and safer initiation of money transfers and the creation of requests to receive money through the "Transfer" service. Behind this idea is PayChat — a Viber Chatbot intermediary that naturally guides users from everyday communication to initiating the sending and receiving of money.
The solution is based on connecting three important pillars of Serbia's modern payment ecosystem. The first is the payment infrastructure of the National Bank of Serbia, namely the IPS NBS system and the "Transfer" service, which represents the core framework for instant payments in the country. The second are banks with their mobile banking (m-banking) applications, available to users across Serbia, where authentication, confirmation and execution of transactions are carried out exclusively. The third is Viber — the most widespread communication platform in the region, including Serbia, where users already communicate on a daily basis. By joining this initiative, we worked together on the solution, connecting these three ecosystems into a unique, simple and secure financial-communication service for users.
We have been working together on this unique solution since May 2024. As part of this cooperation, the National Bank of Serbia worked together with banks on adapting their mobile banking (m-banking) applications, so that they would be ready to accept transactions initiated through PayChat — given that the payment itself is carried out exclusively through the banks' m-banking applications. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case in the world in which a Viber service is connected in this way to the payment service of a country's central bank, linking a globally widespread communication platform with the national instant payment infrastructure and banks' mobile banking systems.
From the very beginning, when designing each functionality, we focused exclusively on two things: real benefits for users and their security. Therefore, PayChat does not execute payments, does not hold users' funds, does not perform authorization, and does not collect or store PINs, passwords, one-time codes or any other sensitive banking data. Order confirmation, authentication and transaction execution remain exclusively within the bank's mobile banking application, while PayChat serves as a simple and transparent bridge to that functionality. In addition, we have built in special user protection mechanisms, such as checking whether the sender is in the contact list before payment, as an additional layer of protection against phishing and impersonation.
Our mission is to make digital payments a simpler, more accessible and more natural part of everyday communication — while fully preserving the security and trust that users have in their banks. We believe that innovation in digital finance does not have to mean shifting the role of banks away from users, but rather connecting it in a smarter and more accessible way with the way people live and communicate today.