The Central Bank of Montenegro (CBCG) revoked Alta Pay Group DOO Podgorica’s authorisation to provide payment services on 1 November 2026, the bank said. All orders the company had received were completed, leaving no risk that citizens’ or businesses’ money would be held in unprocessed transactions.
The revocation stopped Alta Pay Group from conducting payment transactions from that date. Its agents could no longer accept payments or transfer money on the institution’s behalf. Shops, kiosks and other premises where its services had been offered can continue their regular business activities, although they can no longer provide those payment services through the company.
Every payment order received by the institution was executed by 12:53 on 31 October 2026, and it accepted no new orders after that time. CBCG said there were “no outstanding or unexecuted payment orders”. The cutoff preceded the withdrawal of authorisation, so there were no received orders awaiting execution when the company lost permission to operate.
Since it began operating, Alta Pay Group executed 851,527 payment orders, with an average value of 63 euros per order. It also completed 468 money remittances, averaging 187 euros each. Those figures count transactions, not individual customers: one citizen or business could have made several payments.
The company’s payment and money-transfer services operated exclusively within Montenegro. Customers could not use them to send money abroad or receive it from another country. Its transaction totals therefore relate to domestic services rather than cross-border transfers.
The central bank assessed that withdrawing the authorisation posed no risk to the regular and secure functioning of Montenegro’s payment system. Payment transactions continue through banks and other authorised payment-service providers. For customers of Alta Pay Group, the change concerns where they can make future payments, not the completion of orders the institution had already accepted.
