The passage of the Law on the Central Bank of Montenegro (Official Gazette of RM, No. 52/00 and 47/01) in November 2001 marked a new development phase in the reform of the domestic payment operations system.

By the Law, the Central Bank is authorized to perform, regulate and control payment operations, to issue licenses to payment systems and secure efficient payment operations within the Republic.

The Law empowers a full integration of the Payment Operations Bureau (ex ZOP) assets and personnel into the ownership structure of the Central Bank. 

Historically, from the legal standpoint, the transformation of the institution was only a formal one, but never fundamental (title change: SDK → SPP → ZOP and status change: independent legal entity, or a unit of a legal entity).

On the grounds of volume and nature of operations, ZOP was the predominant payment operations participant.

Central Bank is in charge of the following payment operations:

1. opening, maintenance and closing of bank accounts, accounts of the international financial institutions and  donor organizations;
2. opening, maintenance and closing of state accounts of the Republic of Montenegro, including accounts for collection of public revenues and distribution of those revenues to beneficiary accounts in accordance with the regulations;
3. acceptance, validation and execution of cash and non-cash payment orders of its clients;
4. processing of inter-bank and intra-bank payments, via money transfers across the accounts in the giro system (book entry of debits and credits and account balances);
5. inter-bank clearing and settlement;
6. management of cash flows, performance of vault operations (cash lodgment and withdrawals, safekeeping and depositing functions) and performance of cash distribution function to the banking system;
7. maintenance of account registers and other registers, in line with regulations;
8. monitoring of the liquidity of participants in the inter-bank payment system and giro system and provision of intra day and overnight liquidity facility under the set conditions;
9. monitoring of the systemic risks exposures (liquidity, operations and systemic) and undertaking of measures aimed at minimizing those risks;
10. implementation, management and maintenance of the IT systems in support of the inter-bank and giro systems;
11. provision of statistical data on payment operations;
12. provision of information on client account balances and preparation of other prescribed statements on settled payments;
13. implementation of mechanisms for timely identification and elimination of errors and failings and resolution of unexpected situations in performance of payment operations in inter-bank and giro system;
14. other activities and functions in line with the Law and other regulations.

 Apart from these functions, ex –ZOP used to perform other functions, which in their nature cannot be considered as payment operations:

• acceptance, control, processing and reporting on semi-annual and annual financial statements of legal entities,
• external control of legal entities,
• data provision for statistical purposes,
• data provision to tax authorities,
• submission and initiation of liquidation proceedings against the legal entities to commercial courts.

Banks, financial organizations and Post Office used to perform limited number of domestic payment operations functions:

• maintenance of citizens accounts and execution of payments,
• acceptance of citizens cash payments i.e. issuance of cash,
• lodgment of Daily cash payments of the legal entities.

From the above it is evident that ZOP was the main participant and all other institutions acted as payment operations parties.