Hungary launched its Azonnali Fizetesi Rendszer, known as AFR, on 2 March 2020, making it one of the few countries worldwide to mandate instant payment capability for all domestic payment service providers from day one. The system is operated jointly by the Magyar Nemzeti Bank, Hungary's central bank, which provides the central infrastructure, and GIRO Zrt, which handles clearing. All instant payments settle in central bank money through the VIBER real-time gross settlement system.
The AFR processes domestic forint transfers of up to HUF 20 million per transaction, a limit raised from HUF 10 million in September 2024, within five seconds around the clock. As of Q2 2025, the system processed approximately 53 million transactions per quarter, equating to roughly 580,000 transactions per day. More than 35 licensed payment service providers participate in the system, covering the entirety of Hungarian retail banking. The daily settlement value averaged approximately HUF 139 billion as of 2023 reporting.
Secondary identifiers allow senders to initiate payments using a mobile phone number, email address, or tax identification number rather than a traditional bank account number. The system has supported request-to-pay functionality since launch, and this feature has seen notable acceleration. In Q2 2025 alone, 1.19 million request-to-pay transactions were processed worth HUF 527.4 billion, representing increases of 48.9 percent in volume and 81.4 percent in value compared to the prior quarter. The average request-to-pay transaction value of HUF 445,000 reflects its use in higher-value commercial and bill payment scenarios.
The most significant recent development is qvik, a merchant payment service launched in September 2024 as part of the AFR 2.0 upgrade. Qvik unifies four initiation methods under a single standard: QR code, NFC, deep link, and request-to-pay. By the end of Q2 2025, qvik was available at more than 31,000 merchant locations across Hungary. QR, NFC, and deep link transaction volumes grew 344 percent in Q1 2025 and a further 41 percent in Q2 2025, though these payment types still represent only 0.18 percent of Hungarian card payment volumes. The average qvik merchant payment excluding request-to-pay stands at approximately HUF 23,000, more than double the average Hungarian card transaction of HUF 10,000.
Hungary's card payment market provides important context for AFR's growth trajectory. The country has approximately 9 million debit cards and 1 million credit cards in circulation, supporting 1.8 billion card transactions annually worth HUF 17 trillion. Instant payment volumes remain a fraction of this card ecosystem, but the mandatory participation requirement and qvik's expanding merchant footprint provide a structural advantage that voluntary instant payment schemes in other markets lack. Industry projections suggest annual AFR volumes could reach 471 million transactions by the end of 2026, roughly double the current annualized rate.