Diia app was launched in Ukraine in 2022. It provides Ukrainians with ID documents, allows them to register businesses, and obtain various government services online. The participants of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting also became interested in the use cases of Diia app during the full-scale war. In particular, eVorog, a chatbot that helps to inform about the locations of occupation troops.

The AIN.Capital editor met with Mstyslav Banik, Head of e-Services Development at the Ministry of Digital Transformation, and asked him about all areas of development of Ukraine’s main digital product and how the Ukrainian team works on Diia.

Let’s start with the numbers: How many users got the Diia app?

It’s over 19,425,000.

What’s that? MAU, total downloads?

No, it’s the quantity of unique identification tax numbers of users logged into the system. At least once. The number of downloads is much more — over 44 mln. But this is not a valid figure, because people change or lose their smartphones, uninstall and reinstall applications. I should also note that this figure is only for the Diia app, without the website, which has more than 4 million accounts.

But let me tell you about another important metric that I constantly monitor: the audience over 55 years old is 23%. These people also use the available functions: They applied for light bulb exchange, received ePidtrymka, and downloaded COVID vaccination certificates. It is important for us to see this, as we are focused on a mobile-first story and want to make an application that is convenient for everyone. I should add that 55+ people also actively use the website when they find the functions they need, such as subsidies, work experience, pension services, etc.

You’ve paid so much attention to this, so what’s with the idea of smartphones for older people? I remember that, apart from the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the president, only vendors who could make much money from tenders liked this story.

Let me remind you that the idea was presented shortly before the full-scale invasion. We considered giving smartphones to pensioners who cannot afford them but still need to access Diia services.

We then started analyzing this issue, studying the audience, volumes, and, of course, thinking about security: We didn’t want a conditional grandson to sell a phone on OLX on the very first day. Manufacturers have features that make this impossible, so that we would solve this issue. Of course, this story is irrelevant now, and we will return to it after the victory.

So you didn’t reject the idea?

No, and I can tell you why. The digitalization of services is happening despite everything, and we are moving many things online. Suppose we can give a person a smartphone. In that case, they won’t have to go to an ASC or other government agency, won’t have to produce bureaucracy, unnecessary paperwork, and workload, and can do everything at home. In addition, let’s stop underestimating the older generation, who will learn to use online services in the same way if necessary and often already knows how but not always can afford the required device. This is a story about accessibility.

OK, let’s return to this topic after the victory. Let’s continue with Diia. The app has ~20 million users. How many people are working on it?

We have two teams working in tandem. This is the team of the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the team of the Diia State Enterprise. On the surface, everything seems simple, but it is not.

Diia is not just about a function in an app. First, it is the work that the user does not see and should not see — laws and regulations. This is a team of about ten people who have to ensure that everything works properly in the app, per the current legislation.

The team I lead is responsible for the development of digital services. It is about 30 people.

Speaking of the Diia State Enterprise is a product history, and they do everything you see when you tap on the Diia icon on your smartphone. About 30 people are responsible for the development. So, in total, there are less than a hundred specialists.

Tell us how the work is organized. Let’s say you want to add a new feature, for example, military bonds. Describe the process of doing so.

An idea comes first. And they can come from everywhere: the president, the minister, authorities, or our team. For example, I was one of the initiators of the polls.

We discuss ideas almost every Monday on the board where the core team meets. There, we first discuss the feasibility of the service because the idea may be great, but it’s for peacetime, not when the country is at war. We evaluate the feasibility.

Since there can be a lot of good ideas, we start counting the potential audience for the service. We also look at whether systems already allow us to launch the service quickly or whether we need to develop it from scratch.

For example, military bonds. The idea was to use the entire resource of the Diia audience and motivate people to buy military bonds, a vital resource for the state. It is essential that we do not have to sell these bonds ourselves. But we have experience in quickly connecting banks, vendors, and partners, and we can mention ePidtrymka and other services.

It was clear how to launch the service, the feasibility, and the size of the audience.

But military bonds were not a new service, and our goal was to attract as large an audience as possible. We had to reach out to those who had previously ignored military bonds for whatever reason. The idea came from Mykhailo Fedorov: “People don’t just buy war bonds; they invest in the liberation of Ukrainian cities.”

We had an important function, a broad audience, everything we needed on the technical side, and an excellent, clear idea of how this service could become popular among the audience. The puzzle was put together. The service was launched in a few weeks.

Just in case, I’ll also add that this is an open story, and if your company also wants to sell military bonds through Diia, you are welcome to do so, to avoid speculations about the choice of companies.

How do you choose what goes into the app and what to the website?

The website does not offer super-mass services. Everything with the broadest possible audience goes into the app. That’s why light bulbs and military bonds are there. But on the portal, you can get business grants or construction services.

The second point is the complexity of services. The construction industry is accompanied by a large number of documents and its own bureaucracy, and it takes time to fill them out. It’s inconvenient to fill out all this on a small screen on a smartphone, so obviously, a computer is a more convenient option.

The last point, but we rarely address it, is speed. If we need to add a new service very quickly and realize that we have almost no time, we go to the website, which is easier, and then to the app.

Not long ago, I had a conversation with Fedorov, and he said he wants to turn Diia into a kind of Super App and add a whole range of services. You mentioned that you discussed different ideas at your Monday meetings. How do you prioritize them? What should be done first?

There are two general criteria: relevance and technical feasibility. It happens that we do not undertake a task but plan it for “six months from now” because a particular ministry will implement changes or certain functionality in only six months. Not everything depends on the Ministry of Digital Transformation or our desire — we launch functions in tandem with other ministries and must also consider their capabilities. At the same time, we clearly understand the situation on the outside, as we have CDTOs who monitor this in other departments, and we communicate with them and, accordingly, make plans.

For example, we cannot quickly issue a permit for a child to travel abroad because only some things depend on us. We are just a platform in the form of an application. But military bonds are an internal project, so we did everything quickly.

And let’s not forget about sudden unexpected projects, such as the light bulb exchange. But the path is the same: We reach a broad audience, and the problem is clear — the load on the power system from old light bulbs can reach 10%. The Ministry of Economy, Ukrposhta, and European partners have joined in. Therefore, we shifted our other tasks, and the team promptly launched this function, and all other participants also agreed on the necessary changes.

I guess you have a big vision of how you would like to see Diia in the next five years and what tasks it could accomplish. Could you maybe describe it in a very brief way?

The citizen is at the center of our ecosystem. And this is the key concept. What do I mean by that? Yes, you can have a business but are still a citizen. You can be a civil servant. You are still a citizen. You can be a parent of a schoolchild, but you are still a citizen. And so on.

And this is a big field for providing people with services from different categories. Since we have everything for business on the portal now, we need to integrate it into the mobile application gradually. We are working to ensure that a person can use different services as a citizen in the future but in various manifestations.

Therefore, we cannot divide this into several applications, such as PrivatBank, where there are separate apps for businesses and individuals. And it’s not about profiles. We have a citizen in the middle, a different entity. A person who should have access to different services. And our challenge is to combine everything in one application.

Basically, we already have a super app because we have access to various functions and services; it’s not a mono-product with just your ID. But there is much more to come. It takes time, unfortunately, not all at once.

When building the Super App, aren’t you afraid that there will be too much information about every Ukrainian in one place and the next minister or president will use it unfairly?

It’s about the control risk. We design the architecture so that we have no influence or access so that it is transparent, secure, and largely anonymized. You can go to the App Store or Play Market and see what accesses Diia requests. We even ask for geolocation only once — from those who apply for IDP certificates and assistance or change the address of their actual residence.

Of course, there are various risks. However, we live in a democratic country, and I am sure that a society that monitors everything will not allow this to happen.

You gave an excellent example of the light bulbs. It was a super-urgent task, and you jumped in and launched it quickly. How do you feel when you realize that all very complex tasks like this are thrown at the Ministry of Digital Transformation, and Ukrkosmos’ budget for this year is more significant than yours? And you have only 30 developers.

I won’t say that we look back at who gets how much, to be honest. We have a lot of support from donors. Up to a certain point, Diia was developed only with the help of international technical assistance. There is a vast amount of this support; it comes for different areas and from different countries. The primary donor, in terms of the amount of funding, is the United States through USAID.  Our partners include Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, and Estonia. Japan is also joining in.

By working with these international donors, we produce results. They see that they can continue to invest and invest in projects.

How do I feel about this? My dad served in the special forces when I was little. And there, they have a “no one but us” attitude, like a specific mission. I used to think that this is our task.

Let’s go over another point. At some moment, Diia became very popular outside of Ukraine: everyone was talking and writing about the international expansion of the service. Tell me more about what’s going on.

To begin with, Ukraine has never been super-powerful in digital, so we communicated a lot with international partners and studied their experiences when we started. We kept in contact, and over time, we began to tell them what we were doing and, how we were doing it, what we had achieved.

After the start of the full-scale invasion, millions of Ukrainians left Ukraine, and they began to show and tell the world what Diia is and why they love it — they became ambassadors of state development. This drew even more attention to us from the international community.

At this point, everything changed: we were no longer being consulted on how and what to do; they started coming to us.

A new area of work is the export of Diia.

You could say that. We don’t have a separate team for this; we use our existing resources, which we direct to consultations.

But, right away, we are talking about something other than selling our developments for money.

If we are talking about exports, the number one idea is the following. Ukraine has received a lot of international aid during the war, and we want to give something back. The second point is that international donors also support this story of exporting our developments to the world. USAID has allocated $650,000 for a project to study the possibilities of implementing our products in other countries. Because it’s not about a “passport in a smartphone,” it’s like an iceberg: It’s about fighting corruption, transparency, and reducing bureaucracy. That is why our international donors are also interested in sharing our experience.

How does it work? Say, Nigeria calls and says, “We want Diia,” and you tell them to hire 30 developers and go ahead?

To put it simply, yes. The uncomplicated version is as follows.

An interested party asks us to tell them more about what our platform can do and how it works. Let’s pretend they are interested.

The next stage is technical consultations. We tell them how everything works from the inside, how security works, how to work with registries, integrations with services and products, and what is needed to make everything work.

Usually, after that, the stakeholder takes time to think or do some homework: Theyselves need to understand whether they can take our approach and implement everything. One country, for example, does not have TINs in its registers, and it will be challenging to work in the Diia format without them. Either the architecture is such that implementing our developments will not be possible, or it will be difficult. Let’s imagine everything went well here, too, and the country is ready to work further.

Diia is a fairly large project, and we have many functions and services: We talk about the possibilities, and the stakeholder indicates where it is interesting to start. Plus, you must understand that we work very fast in Ukraine, and only some are ready to keep up with this pace. Therefore, an imaginary MVP is being assembled with what the country is prepared to come out with. This is where additional technical consultations for this MVP begin. Then there are the point-by-point clarifications about which design they will use — their own or ours — which part of the code to transfer to them, and so on. They also choose the name of their service themselves, and there is no “call it Diia” clause anywhere.

The other country should have an implementing company responsible for this MVP’s content and its further development. We only advise and help.

Again, this is an essential point: The Ministry of Digital Transformation or the Diia State Enterprise do not have access to their systems, registers, or anything else, and we do not work with their information.

There is a certain irony that Estonia is now learning from you. What are your feelings?

At first glance, maybe. Let’s take a broader look at the situation. We studied the experience of Estonia. They were the first to go digital, while others were not even thinking about it. And we all learned from them. But at one point, the Estonians put everything on the web, and we put it on a mobile app. And what did Estonia do? They did not reinvent anything and borrowed our existing product and experience. Just as we once borrowed their expertise.

So, yes, it’s great when Estonia borrows your product, but let’s be honest — without all the achievements in Estonia that we used, it’s not a fact that we would have been so successful.

You said that you wouldn’t sell it — you just share your achievements with other countries. So don’t you think about earning money, having so many opportunities?

We are a government agency, and we must create an affordable and user-friendly service for our citizens. Therefore, I have no comment on this question right now.

Last question. Are you going to change the operator that processes payments? According to my information, it is a matter of time.

I will give a brief comment: we are working on this matter. When we started the current cooperation, this company had the lowest fees, and no one else, no matter what they wrote on Facebook, had such rates. And in some projects, funds are transferred with no fees at all. For example, all donations through Diia are commission-free. If you donate to the Army of Drones on Diia, the funds go directly to the National Bank’s account. Now we will have to reconsider our cooperation.

From now on, companies engaged in the following activities can become a resident of Diia.City:

• development, implementation, and support of solutions for international card payment systems
• manufacturing of technological products for use in the defense, industrial, and domestic areas
• hosting, in particular, cloud data centers

“We continue to create the conditions for Ukraine’s economic development. We expanded the list of qualified activities for Diia.City and now even more companies will be able to take advantage of the unique space,” Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, explained in a comment for AIN.Capital.

In March, the Ministry of Digital Transformation for the first time simplified the criteria for the residency due to martial law.

So far, more than 150 international and Ukrainian IT companies have already joined Diia.City. Among them are Luxoft, PandaDoc, MEGOGO, Revolut, SoftServe, EPAM, MacPaw.

“We want to invest in Ukraine and create jobs here. That’s why I’m happy to announce that Revolut is becoming the first resident of Diia City,” Dmitriy said.

• According to Strelchuk, the company has more than a hundred openings for technical professionals in Ukraine.
• The best employees are promised benefits in the form of options.
• Revolut registered a juridical entity in Ukraine back in September 2021. And since May, the company has been actively recruiting employees in Kyiv. In December 2021, in an interview with AIN.UA, Revolut co-founder Vladyslav Yatsenko said that the company planned to hire at least 100 developers in Ukraine.

• Revolut is a super app in the field of personal and business finance. It has a lot of features and services available. The company is actively growing and has a presence in 36 countries.
• Revolut is the highest valued UK unicorn. In 2021, the company was worth $33 billion.
• The special legal framework for IT companies Diia City launched on February 8, 2022, and the Ministry of Digital Transformation has already started the registration. Check out our article to learn more about the registration procedure:

How Diia City works

Describing it in a nutshell, Diia City is a special legal framework for the Ukrainian IT industry started in 2022. Participation is voluntary. Any Ukrainian company that meets requirements can get residency in Diia City. All residents will have specific benefits and a new form of cooperation with employees — gig contracts. There are also implemented several terms from British law that will be useful for companies getting foreign investments — option contracts, convertible loans, etc.

The residents must also fulfill certain restrictions and obligations (for example, volume limits for the work with individual entrepreneurs and obligatory audit). This special legal mode is described in two Laws:

• Digital Economy Support Law no. 1667-IX. It describes what Diia City is and how it works.
• About amendments to the Tax Code of Ukraine and other Laws of Ukraine regarding the Digital Economy Support no. 1946-ІХ. In general, it defines tax rates and work conditions for residents.
• There is also a Resolution of the Minister Cabinet of Ukraine prescribing application rules in Diia City.

We did many publications about Diia City. Let’s make a brief reminder.

• The new residents can choose what corporate tax to pay: 9% exit capital tax (ECT) or 18% income tax.
  • What is the ECT? Maksym Nosarev, IT lawyer and founder of Tretten Lawyers, provides an example: A company made $100,000. Current corporate income tax means an immediate payment of 18% of the whole sum. If the company works with the exit capital tax, a part of income spent on variable costs and the development is not to tax.
• The income of individuals in the form of dividends from a resident company will be tax-free if paid not more than once in two years. There will also be a tax discount for individuals if they purchase a share of a startup that is the Diia City resident.
• Income of employees and gig specialists of Diia City residents will be taxed as follows: personal income tax – 5%, Social Security fee – 22% of the minimum wage, military tax – 1.5% (of an employee’s salary or a gig employee remuneration). If a professional receives more than 240,000 euros per year, all income above this limit will be taxed at 18% PIT.
• For some residents, there are volume limits in working with individual entrepreneurs (FOPs). We have already posted an article about them.

Some Ukrainian IT companies are already talking about their Diia City residency, for example, SoftServe and MacPaw.

How to apply for Diia City residency?

During the Diia Summit, the Ministry of Digital Transformation declared that after February 8, 2022, IT companies could apply for residence under those special terms. There is also a new register of Diia City residents.

To apply for special taxation mode, you need to:

• go to the official website of Diia City
• pass verification with your digital signature
• fill out an application

The application and attached documents must be in Ukrainian and signed with a qualified electronic signature (QES). A company may initially choose the new taxation mode (to pay the ECT instead of the income tax).

Fill out the following fields:

• Full name and ID of the company
• Contacts: email address and contact phone number
• Mark if it is a startup
• Mark that there are no obstacles forbidding the residency in Diia City
• Mark that your company meets requirements for the residency in Diia City
• Mark if the company switches to the exit capital tax (if yes, fill out a small information that will be sent to the State Fiscal Service)
• If it’s a startup, enter the income for the last year — it must not exceed 7 million UAH
• Choose a qualified activity that the company will do
• Fill out the field about company representatives

The Ministry of Digital Transformation will proceed with your application within ten working days. If the company meets the standards, it will be registered in the register of Diia City residents. Now you are a member of this unique legal and taxation project. The register is available on the Diia City website.

The registration works as a “silent agreement.” If you won’t receive a refusal or any feedback after 10 working days, it means that your company is a “citizen” of Diia City now.

Frequently Asked Questions about Diia City.

What are the requirements to become a resident?

For existing IT companies:

• providing activities mentioned in the legislation about Diia City (more details here or on its official website)
• 90% of revenue comes from the activities mentioned above;
• average monthly salary of employees or bonus of gig workers is at least 1,200 EUR (excluding individual entrepreneurs)
• +9 employees and/or gig workers (excluding individual entrepreneurs)

For startups:

• providing activities mentioned in the legislation about Diia City
• 90% of revenue comes from the activities mentioned above
• business registration within 24 months before applying here
• annual income doesn’t exceed 7.5 million UAH

For brand-new companies or startups:

• providing activities mentioned in the legislation about Diia City;
• 90% of revenue comes from the activities mentioned above;
• business registration within 24 months before applying here;
• annual income doesn’t exceed 7.5 mln UAH.

How will they check a company?

The requirements above will be checked based on the compliance reports submitted by residents and the mandatory independent auditor’s conclusions. In the case of the first report of a brand-new company, this requirement is not applied.

If the company violates those criteria, it will lose its residency.

Can a foreign company become a resident?

It can if it registers a legal entity in Ukraine.

How can a company leave Diia City?

• If a company ceases to meet the requirements described above, it must notify the Ministry of Digital Transformation, and it will be removed from the register.
• A company can also quit at its own will. For this, it must submit an application to the Ministry.

How to choose the tax: 18% income tax or 8% exit capital tax?

If the company plans to reinvest, better to choose the ECT. The taxation base here is asset export operations in the form of dividends and related payments. For example, it provides irrevocable financial support and makes deals by giving a counterparty its assets but getting nothing in return.

Do I need to submit information to the State Fiscal Service if my company becomes the resident?

• If your resident company stays with the income tax, there is no need to inform the SFS.
• If your company switches to the ECT, you must notify the SFS.

The rules for residents working with individual entrepreneurs

• Companies that pay the 18% income tax, whose annual income does not exceed 40 million UAH, will be able to work with individual entrepreneurs without restrictions during the entire period of the Diia City regime.
• For all other residents, payments to individual entrepreneurs should not exceed 20% of total costs. For those companies that will pay the ECT, amounts above the limit will be subject to this tax at the rate of 9%.
• For companies that pay the income tax, those costs for individual entrepreneurs that exceed 20% will have to be included in the financial result.
• Restrictions on working with individual entrepreneurs will be fully operational only from 2025. Until then, there will be a transition period of three years: until 2024 – no restrictions; in 2024, tax-free payments not exceeding 50% will be allowed.

• Diia Summit will take place on this day. This is a conference from the Ministry of Digital Transformation, where the agency will give all the details about how to register in Diia City and how it will work.
• There is the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers describing how the registration will work. The Ministry of Digital Transformation will launch online registration on the website.
• To get the status of the Diia City resident, a company should apply to the Ministry of Digital Transformation based on Annex 1 of the Decree (the link to download the Ukrainian version). Moreover, the application may be submitted both via the website of the Ministry and by e-mail.
• This application consists of several pages, where the applicant company indicates its name and the name of its legal entity, contact information, the information about income, the type of its activity, etc.
• The Ministry of Digital Transformation is processing the application during ten working days starting from the application date, checking the provided information, and deciding whether to leave the application without an answer, decline it, or provide a company with the Diia City residency status. 

On February 8, 2022, AIN.UA will publish a detailed article about the start of Diia City and the registration process.

What happened

• The Ministry of Digital Transformation has announced plans to develop an English version of Dia. These plans include an upgrade of the e-service management platform and user’s account.
• As the Ministry stated, the tender is a project of EU4DigitalUA, which the European Union launched to support the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine in October 2020. The project budget is 25 million euros.
• The Estonian nonprofit organization E-Governance Academy will conduct the tender. It participated in the implementation of such e-government systems in Ukraine as Trembita (Трембіта) and Vulyk (Вулик).
• According to the Ministry, the tender is aimed at creating an English-language version of the website and make the electronic services available to foreign citizens and Ukrainians living abroad.
• Applications can be submitted on the Estonian Public Procurement Portal until August 13, 2021.
• The winner of the tender will be awarded a contract for 22 months, the Ministry said.

The data were collected using combined methods: analysis of mobile operators’ and state registers’ databases as well as utilizing social surveys.

Such a census was conducted in Ukraine for the first time. Previously, sociologists have been taking a census by coming to the apartments of Ukrainians, and this method required a lot of money.

Interesting figures and diagrams

According to the collected data, Ukraine has almost 3 million more women than men: 20.01 million women and 17.28 million men.

There are almost 6 million children under 14 years of age in Ukraine. 6+ million people are over 65 years old. The majority of the population (44% of Ukrainians) are of working age (25-54 year-olds).

The population of Kyiv is 3.7 million people. It is even more than the entire Kharkiv region, which is the largest region in Ukraine in terms of population – 2,700+.

Dubilet also answered a number of frequently asked questions about the census.

Costs and terms for the evaluation and census

The evaluation took 3 months. According to Dmytro, this work did not cost any extra money for the country.

If the census had been conducted using traditional methods (visiting each citizen), it would have cost ₴3.4 billion (the budget for 2020), and the results would have been obtained only in the first quarter of 2021.

The main purpose of creating BankID in Ukraine is to provide reliable and convenient user identification for the provision of administrative and banking services via the Internet on special portals. We have already reviewed which electronic services are available in Ukraine, and on which portals.

BankID solves the problem of user identification via the Internet: in order to provide, for example, a certificate of payroll, the service first needs to make sure that exactly the specific person is requesting information. If a citizen chooses identification via BankID, he/she enters the login and password of his/her Internet banking, passes the second stage of authorization (for example, entering a one-time password from SMS) and thus confirms his/her identity.

How does BankID login work?

Login with BankID is very similar to the popular “Login with Facebook” or “Login with Google” button on registration pages and works based on the OAuth 2.0 protocol:

Below is a real example of what it looks like when entering a portal or when ordering a service, it can be a button or a banner:

To order a certificate, enter the data in the registry, etc., two conditions are sufficient:

1. To be a client of a bank connected to the BankID system;
2. The portal must be connected to the same BankID system.

We will explain the second point in more detail: in Ukraine, two BankID systems operate in parallel, one is built on the basis of Oschadbank, the second one is PrivatBank. And although the administrative services portals can support both systems simultaneously, Dmitry Dubilet previously explained the situation with two different systems.

What services and banks are connected to each of the BankID systems?

At the moment, only two organizations are connected to the NBU system on the basis of Oschadbank: Oschadbank itself, and Radabank. A number of other banks are at different stages of preparation, testing and connection to the system now.

More banks are connected to the system built on the basis of PrivatBank, among them: PrivatBank, A-Bank, Pivdennyi Bank, and Concord Bank, FUIB Bank (PUMB) is also indicated, however, when it is selected, an unavailability message is displayed. “Wait, FUIB will connect to the BankID system soon.”

In addition to banks, the following are connected to the PrivatBank system:

• online lending services: UltraCash, Global Credit, POZYCHAIko, CreditUP, СreditPlus, KF.UA and others;
• hosting and Internet providers: Hosting Ukraine;
• online business: FreelanceHunt, Bezplatka and RIA.com.

Also, you can pass identification using an Android-smartphone through the “PrivatBank” system. If you have an ID-card (plastic passport), your smartphone must have an NFC-chip, if you have a digital signature (EDS), then it’s not necessary.

Next, we consider a system on the basis of which in October the NBU allowed banks to open accounts for individuals through the BankID system, and which is the main one when it comes to interaction with government agencies – a system based on Oschadbank.

The list of services that support the use of the BankID service from the NBU:

Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, Unified State Portal of Administrative Services, Government Services Portal, Electronic Petitions to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, Unified System of City Petitions, Online System “Public Budget”, State Agency for E-Government of Ukraine, Public Project “Budget of Urban Initiatives”, State Geocadastre of Ukraine, Public Initiative Platform “My Voice”, as well as Lviv City Council, Kharkiv Electronic Services Portal and Kyiv Electronic Services Portal.

The logic of the system is based on the organization of online requests from service portals to the banking system of a particular bank through a single gateway, which is the central hub of the BankID system of the NBU, and address data transfer in a signed and encrypted form. All requests go exclusively through the central node BankID of the NBU and only at the click of a button by the client.

The data that the bank can transmit to the portal is as follows:

• Full Name;
• Date of Birth;
• series and passport number;
• identification number (TIN);
• scan copies of passport and TIN;
• registration address;
• phone number;
• email address

Identification through BankID is practically the same as checking documents at banks in person. When opening an account, Ukrainian banks record and save client data, such as full name, scanned copies of a passport and TIN, registration address, etc. This is approved by the standards of registration and storage of customer data and is controlled by the State represented by the National Bank of Ukraine. An access to the customer data when using BankID is protected as reliably as access to funds through the Internet Bank.

Current situation

Despite the permission to open accounts by individuals using BankID, banks do not yet provide such an opportunity. Currently, BankID is still used to identify the user via the Internet when providing administrative services, meaning that the first stage in the NBU concept continues. Connection to the system for all participants is free.

At the second stage, in addition to agreeing on regulatory and regulatory acts that will finally implement the concept of remote identification for remote opening of accounts by banks, the NBU accepts proposals for the pricing of services and the procedure for mutual settlements. Fees may be charged by the bank providing the services (the bank did the work – identified the client in its branches) from another bank or service that wants to identify the client through BankID.

The beginning of the second stage was started by amending the NBU Resolution No. 116 of November 5 of this year. Within the nearest future the service will provide access to banking and commercial services. In addition to banks, mobile operators and non-bank financial institutions are also very interested in this.

The system will determine suspicious tenders for 35 indicators. According to Nefyodov, this number will grow.

Every purchase is automatically checked according to the list of criteria, the result is summed up, adjusted considering the cost of the purchase and transferred to the State Audit Office. Auditors watch and ask questions through ProZorro platform. In case they confirm the violations, they give an order for elimination. If the customer does not eliminate the violations, the auditors conduct an inspection and, based on its results, can refer the matter to law enforcement agencies.

As Nefyodov informs, Ukraine is the first country in the world to launch such monitoring of all purchases, and not only for procedural violations monitoring, but also for the presence of real risks. The official notes that now there are more than 30 criteria in the development, as well as there is creation of risk combinations.