RegTech is a set of technologies that automate financial companies’ compliance with regulatory requirements. Several years ago, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) introduced its Concept for the Development of Innovative Supervisory (SupTech) and Regulatory (RegTech) Technologies, and with the tightening of installment and payment requirements in the EU, compliance automation is becoming not an advantage, but a prerequisite for operating in the market.
Artsiom Liashanau explains the meaning behind this term and why the topic goes beyond a narrow engineering discussion.
What is RegTech
RegTech (regulatory technology) is a set of IT solutions that automate financial companies’ compliance with regulatory requirements.
For example, customer due diligence (KYC/AML), sanctions control, suspicious transaction monitoring, and reporting to the regulator. These technologies take over routine compliance tasks that were previously performed manually by lawyers and compliance officers.
Arguments in favor of the topic’s relevance for Ukraine
- The NBU has developed its own Concept for the Development of Innovative Supervisory (SupTech) and Regulatory (RegTech) Technologies in the Ukrainian Financial Market;
- The document was created as part of the implementation of the Financial Sector Development Strategy and the FinTech Development Strategy in Ukraine;
- Sanctions compliance in Ukraine is a necessary operational requirement with a high cost of error;
- Companies handling international payments are required to check counterparties against constantly updated sanctions lists;
- Manual verification, given the volume of requirements, is physically unscalable without automation.
Each of these issues could be addressed individually, for example, by hiring an additional employee or conducting more frequent reconciliations. However, taken together, they create a workload that, according to Artsiom Liashanau, is easier to address with an automated solution than by manually increasing staffing.
How does this relate to new installment payment requirements in the EU
The DCC2 Directive, which comes into force in the EU on November 20, 2026, requires systematic verification of customer solvency, even for small purchase amounts. For Ukrainian companies operating with BNPL in the European market, this requirement is no longer hypothetical, but a direct condition of operation.
- Manually verifying each transaction at such a high volume is economically unviable for any business size.
- Automated RegTech solutions are technically necessary to comply with the new rules at all, even with high transaction volumes.
- Ukrainian companies targeting the European market are facing this requirement directly, rather than through interim adaptation.
This makes RegTech a direct consequence of what is happening with payment regulation outside of Ukraine.
Where the market is heading
According to Artsiom Liashanau, several processes are occurring in parallel and reinforcing each other:
- By 2026, artificial intelligence (AI) in fintech will no longer be an experimental feature;
- AI-based systems process millions of transactions per second and generate reports automatically, without the delay of manual processing;
- Regulatory requirements are being tightened simultaneously in several jurisdictions (such as the UK), creating a cumulative effect;
- The NBU has been implementing SupTech and RegTech initiatives for several years, drawing on the experience of foreign regulators, which reduces the likelihood of a sharp gap between the Ukrainian and European approaches to compliance.
As these processes converge, the market is likely moving toward a model where compliance becomes an integrated element of the fintech infrastructure itself.
