PrivatBank is the largest commercial bank of Ukraine that was launched in 1992. In 1996, it was the first financial institution that became a member of the Visa International payment system. In 2012, the network of the bank’s ATMs exceeded 8,000. The number of the bank’s offices in the country was more than 4,000 at that time, while 50% of all card payments in the country accounted for PrivatBank. By 2013, the financial institution had issued over 30 million bank cards. The bank’s share in the banking sector of the country reached 23%.
In 2016, the financial institution was nationalized to protect 20 million customers, their deposits, and preserve financial stability in the country. The bank encountered numerous problems due to the bank’s irresponsible lending policy that entailed huge losses. The bank insolvency was declared by the National Bank of Ukraine in December, 2016.
PrivatBank highlights
PrivatBank always tries to improve its services and use advanced technologies for that. In 2018, PrivatBank was the first in the country that offered Apple Pay technology to its clients. In 2019, it was called the best Internet bank, according to FinAwards 2019.
In 2019, PrivatBank and Visa announced the launch in Ukraine of the FacePay24 biometric payment system for purchases for retail chains. The launch of this service became possible due to the integration of modern Visa payment methods, Amazon Web Services technologies with the updated Privat24 mobile banking platform. The technology allows customers to forget a phone at home and still be served in offline retail. PrivatBank said that FacePay24 uses one of the world’s leading automatic face recognition systems, Amazon Recognition and makes it possible to scale this service to almost any outlet.
In 2020, the processing center processed more than 1,000 customer transactions per second, that is, up to 60,000 transactions every minute, which is a national record. In 2022, the bank introduced voice recognition features. The voice biometrics technology was launched to provide a secure and fast service.
The bank offers Privat24 app to its users, allowing clients to make secure card-to-card money transfers, pay utility and phone bills, make international transfers with Visa, MasterCard, Western Union and LiqPay.
Being very popular among entrepreneurs, the bank constantly offers up-to-date solutions to support them. Credit programs, leasing for business, launch of a marketplace of Ukrainian goods are just several things that make merchants select this bank. In 2020, PrivatBank was one of the first to join the program “Affordable Loans 5-7-9%” and, by January 2021, issued more than 2.5 thousand loans to entrepreneurs, which is the highest figure among Ukrainian banks. In addition, PrivatBank regularly offers profitable initiatives for business, in particular, such as the “Successful Business!” campaign launched by the facility allowing to run up to 5 accounts for free.
The bank runs the KUB (country of successful business) program, providing loans to active Ukrainians who want to start their own business and entrepreneurs who are looking for ways to expand their small business. PrivatBank reduced interest rates on loans under the KUB program and established them 1,4% per month for the first 6 months, and then 1,2% per month, beginning from the 6th month of work.
Though not all legal entities are eligible for the loan, this is a unique opportunity, contributing to the market economy in the country. With PrivatBank, businesses can lease agricultural and special equipment, passenger cars of popular brands at a rate of 0.01%.
