Serbia Moves 5,200 Government Fees to Electronic Payment
Amendments to the eGovernment Law took effect on September 8: citizens and businesses no longer need a paper payment slip, since the state now checks on its own whether a fee has been paid.
More than 5,200 individual fees and charges collected at the national and local level formally entered a system geared toward paperless electronic payment starting today, September 8. That is when amendments to Serbia’s eGovernment Law took effect, requiring every public authority, republic, provincial and local, to make all the fees and charges it collects payable electronically by the end of 2026 at the latest.
Until now the process ran in reverse: a citizen paid at a counter or via a payment slip, then had to carry the proof themselves to show the authority had received it. The new law flips that around, so the authority verifies the payment on its own, with no paper the person has to produce.
Two deadlines, one of them just eight days out
The law sets two concrete dates. Republic, provincial and local authorities have until September 16 to register on the eGovernment portal and in the ePlati payment system, and to give their own staff visibility there into which payments have actually come in. The second deadline, the end of October, covers a bigger job: every authority must list and enter all of its fees and charges into the Unified Registry of Non-Tax Revenue, and link them to the matching procedures in the Registry of Administrative Procedures.
“For the new system to actually work from start to finish, authorities need to enter and list all their fees and charges in the registry as soon as possible, and no later than the end of October, and then link those fees to the matching procedures in the Registry of Administrative Procedures,” said Jelena Bojovic, NALED’s program director, in a statement from the organization. That step, she explained, is essential so that the Office for IT and eGovernment can use the ePlati system to let citizens and businesses pick a procedure with a single click, while the system itself calculates the amount and processes the payment.
The listing work so far has not been small. More than 5,200 individual fees and charges have been entered into the registry, and 93 of Serbia’s 145 local governments and 44 republic-level authorities have listed, or started listing, their levies across 383 regulations. Once the system is linked to roughly 8,000 procedures from the Registry of Administrative Procedures, more than 9,000 authorities are expected to gain visibility into payments made. NALED has promised additional training for those that miss the end-of-September mark.
What already works, and what is still coming
Part of the system is already running: citizens and businesses can already pay fees and charges owed to the Interior Ministry (MUP) electronically, through ePlati or the “General Payment Slip” option. The rest arrives in the reform’s second phase, when electronic payment is meant to become available for procedures across all authorities, with the amount and recipient pre-filled.
Getting to that point has taken a while. The same reform was announced earlier too, at a session of the eGovernment Alliance in the Stari Grad municipality, where NALED had set January 1, 2026, as the target date for electronic payment without having to submit proof of payment. The law that took effect today has only now turned that target into an obligation with firm dates attached.
Bojovic also points to the practical upside for businesses: “Less paper, fewer trips to the counter, and less room for error, along with more certainty that a payment has been properly recorded.” Digitalization, NALED adds, should also close off the loopholes a paper slip allows, from reusing the same proof of payment more than once to altering the details on a slip that has already been certified.
The overhaul of non-tax revenue is being carried out by the Ministry of Finance, the Office for IT and eGovernment, the Republic Secretariat for Public Policy and the Treasury Administration, with NALED’s support. It is one of the measures under Serbia’s Reform Agenda, part of the European Union’s Growth Plan for the Western Balkans.
