Electronic funds transfers
direct debits · direct credits · Pagos al Instante BCRD · internet banking · mobile banking
The five elements and the actors
The Reglamento organizes the payment system into five elements, and so does this simulation. Here they are, with the instruments each one carries, the systems of the SIPARD, and the cast of simulated counterparts that stands for them.
The five elements
The Central Bank’s own diagram, Elementos de un sistema de pago, has five elements. The ecosystem maps one architectural layer to each of them — which is why a team’s integration lands on the real taxonomy rather than on ours.
01Entities that offer and operate payment instruments
02Payment instruments
03Communication networks
04Support entities
05Laws, conventions, rules and procedures
The instruments
- Cheques
- Electronic instruments
Card purchases
debit · credit · prepaid · mobile devices · physical and virtual POS · ATMs
Electronic payment accounts
direct debits and credits · remittances · social subsidies · POS · ATMs · cash withdrawal · e-commerce · bill payment · airtime and data top-ups
Instruments and their rules are Título VIII of the Reglamento: electronic funds transfers, payment cards and electronic payment accounts (Art. 78); the electronic payment account itself (Art. 19–25), whose balance equals the nominal value received, bears no interest and is refundable on demand; and the obligation on every provider to present and read a QR code carrying the data to initiate a payment order, to a standard the Central Bank sets by instructivo (Art. 78 §IV).
SIPARD and its systems
The Sistema de Pago y Liquidación de Valores de la República Dominicana is a public service owned exclusively by the Central Bank, to which all financial-intermediation entities and other authorized entities are attached. The ecosystem simulates its systems one by one — and the instant-payments system the Reglamento adds on top of them.
SIMULATED CENTRAL BANK
SGPI10 s · 24/7/365 · alias
LBTRreal-time gross settlement
SCCcheque clearing
Securitiessettlement system
Direct debitand direct credit
CardNETATM transactions
Mobile paymentssystem
Visacard processing
Mastercardcard processing
Subagentesbancarios
The SIPARD is owned exclusively by the Central Bank (Ley 183-02, Art. 27; Reglamento Art. 62) and is made up of the real-time gross settlement system, the cheque clearing system, the securities settlement system, the direct debit and direct credit systems, the payment system for CardNET ATM transactions, the mobile payments system, the Visa and Mastercard card-processing systems, and the payment system for subagentes bancarios transactions (BCRD SIPARD page). On top of them the Reglamento adds the Sistema de Gestión de Pagos Instantáneos, administered by the Central Bank (Art. 60), whose management is exclusive to it and not delegable (Art. 62).
The actors we simulate
The taxonomy is the Reglamento’s, so a team’s integration maps one-to-one onto the real roles. Every simulator carries a Lab name and a visible notice: Banco Norte, EPE del Lab, Adquirente del Lab. None of them ever presents itself as the entity it is modelled after.
Simulated Central Bank
Administrator of the LBTR, the SCC and the SGPI; keeper of current accounts; vigilancia; recipient of notifications and registrations; issuer of the account standard.
Simulated supervisors and UAF
Banking, insurance and securities supervisors, and a simulated financial-intelligence unit for suspicious- and cash-transaction reports.
Banks (3–5)
Financial-intermediation entities with core accounts, cards, loans, cheques and electronic payment accounts, direct participation in the LBTR, and hosting for the machines on the floor. Each with a personality: strict legacy, permissive digital, cooperative, savings-and-loan.
Electronic-payment entity
Electronic payment accounts, a network of agents, remittance and social-subsidy inflows, and the RD$79,000 funding and balance cap.
Acquirer and sub-acquirer
Merchant affiliation, POS and e-commerce authorization, clearing, settlement, chargebacks, and the cross-border acquiring rules.
Card-scheme processors (two)
Authorization, clearing, settlement, tokenization, 3-D Secure outcomes and EMV.
ATM-network administrator and host
The switch between the machines on the Lab floor and the simulated banks — cardholder and cardless flows alike.
Direct-debit / direct-credit administrator
Batch and file-based transfers with a business-day calendar, returns and reason codes.
Wallet, initiation and gateway providers
The three provider categories the Reglamento newly recognizes, each with its own registration and its own limits.
Agents and subagentes bancarios
Cash-in, cash-out, enrolment at the counter and card delivery, at pharmacies, hotels, telco service centres, supermarkets and colmados.
Remittance, exchange and SIPA counterpart
Remittance-and-exchange agents, exchange agents, and the regional counterpart for USD transfers.
Insurers and digital brokers
Quote, bind, premium by direct debit or card, claim, payout — plus embedded insurance on a loan or a transfer.
Instrument engines
Cheque (digitization, truncation, image), transfers (direct debit, direct credit, instant), cards (debit, credit, prepaid), electronic payment account, QR.
Gateway and bus
Protocol adapters — ISO 8583, ISO 20022, REST/OpenAPI, file exchange, webhooks — with message signing, time-stamps and a log of every message.
Identity and signature
Civil-registry lookups, document and liveness verification, and a certification entity for digital signatures and time-stamps.
Bureaus, tax, social security, telcos
Credit bureaus, taxpayer lookup and e-invoice acknowledgements, payroll, top-ups and phone-number signals — plus cheque printers and scanner vendors as critical suppliers.
Synthetic population
People and businesses with a coherent identity across registry, bureaus, banks, the electronic-payment entity and the telco; merchants; and, from Phase 3, adversaries. Generated per run; no real personal data anywhere.
Every institutional role is also an AI persona — the compliance officer at Banco Norte, the analyst at the simulated financial-intelligence unit, the operator at the simulated Central Bank — so a human-in-the-loop step can be played by an agent or by a visitor standing on the Lab floor.
The full cast, endpoint by endpoint, is in the technical manual; the map draws it whole.