Cashless Payments: Legislative Amendment Postpones the Effective Date to May 2026
The obligation for sellers to enable customers to make cashless payments for purchases exceeding EUR 1 has been postponed until 1 May 2026.. Originally, this obligation was scheduled to take effect on 1 March 2026. The change was introduced by an amendment to the Act on the Registration of Sales, which has been published in the Collection of Laws.
From 1 May 2026, merchants will be required to offer customers at least one cashless payment option for purchases of EUR 1 or more. However, the law does not prescribe which specific cashless payment method merchants must provide. Businesses may choose the solution that best suits their needs, such as a payment terminal, mobile payment, QR payment, or another cashless payment method. Cash payments will continue to remain a fully accepted method of payment.
The postponement of this obligation is intended to give merchants more time to make the necessary technical preparations. This primarily includes implementing software for QR payments, setting up payment terminals, and adapting cash register systems.
The expansion of cashless payment options to include QR payments, which are technically simple to implement and particularly suitable for small businesses, is part of the modernization of the Financial Administration’s services carried out in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic. It will also be possible to generate QR payments through the Virtual Cash Register (VCR). When paying via a QR code, the customer completes the payment by scanning a QR code that contains all the information required to process the transaction.
The four largest banks in Slovakia—VÚB, Tatra banka, ČSOB, and Slovenská sporiteľňa—are expected to be ready, as of 1 May 2026, to provide payment receipt notifications to the eKasa system. At the same time, the amendment to the Payment Services Act provides that, until the end of 2027, banks may not charge fees for cashless payment notifications, provided they use the system made available free of charge by the Financial Directorate of the Slovak Republic for this purpose.
