In Cyprus the target for this payment is clear: not short-stay tourists without an account, but resident and corporate customers who actually use a SEPA account, whether a CY IBAN or another eurozone IBAN. Thanks to the EU's IBAN discrimination ban, a payment cannot be refused based on which member state issued the account, so customers such as international residents living in Cyprus who use a fintech account from another country are accommodated in the same flow. That borderless account use is guaranteed by regulation is what raises the practical value of this method in Cyprus.

The infrastructure requirements are in place as well. The SCT Inst reception (January 2025) and sending (October 2025) obligations the EU Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) imposed on eurozone banks, along with the principle that fees may not exceed those of standard transfers, apply to Cypriot banks identically. On top of the standard scheme governed by the European Payments Council (EPC), you can consider shifting high-value one-off payments from a customer base with a high share of international residents over to account payments.

The payment starts at the bank selection screen. Once the customer picks one, whether a Cypriot bank or another eurozone bank they use, the PISP passes a transfer approval request with the payee and amount filled in to that bank's authentication environment. When the customer completes identity verification in the banking app, approval takes effect on the spot, and between banks connected via SCT Inst the deposit is confirmed within seconds. Cases without instant transfer support move to the standard SEPA schedule. Hecto Financial receives and converts the EUR that arrives and pays out to the merchant in Korea in the currency specified in the contract among USD, KRW, and JPY.

Hecto Financial supports domestic merchants in adopting a SEPA checkout for Cyprus through integration with a PSD2-authorized payment initiation service partner. Because the result is finalized the moment approval is given, it is best to design your inventory handling and order-confirmation logic around this real-time approval flow.

• Business registration country

  Confirm contract eligibility for businesses registered in Korea

• Sales channels

  The integration approach and priorities vary depending on your mix of online sales channels, such as your own site, open marketplaces, and mobile apps

• Product categories

  Check in advance whether your products fall under categories restricted by the SEPA payment initiation partner's merchant policy

• EU regulatory compliance

  Confirm compliance with EU payment regulations such as PSD2 and SEPA (see official sources below)

The card dispute costs that often become an issue in transactions with international customers are structurally absent from this payment. Because it is a push transfer the account holder approves and sends themselves, no chargeback procedure applies, and it has nothing to do with SDD's 8-week unconditional refund right. For the same reason, a transfer is final the moment it completes, and in situations requiring a refund, including a Cypriot consumer's 14-day right of withdrawal, the merchant executing a separate transfer toward the customer's account is the only return path. Here, even if the customer's account is not a CY IBAN, the refund transfer is equally possible under the IBAN discrimination ban. Revenue settlement takes place after Hecto Financial receives and converts the EUR, in the contracted currency among USD, KRW, and JPY, on a cycle set by the contract terms.

• Central Bank of CyprusOfficial information on Cyprus's payment systems and related regulations. If actual regulations differ from this page's content, the official source takes precedence.