As expected, Tuesday April 6, 1999, was marked in the Croatian National Bank by a successful implementation of the Croatian Real Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS). After a preparatory period during which the System was installed and tested in cooperation with all relevant institutions, accounts of 54 banks (settlement accounts, mandatory reserves accounts and mandatory deposits accounts) were transferred to the Croatian National Bank. Five savings banks joined the aforementioned banks in the first phase of the implementation of the System.
In the very first morning of the introduction, 94 payment transactions totaling 349,996,566.90 were made by applying the installed RTGS.
The introduction of the national RTGS in the Croatian central bank also enabled the creation of the necessary infrastructure for the overnight trading on the money market.
With the implementation of the RTGS, Croatia's payment system came closer to payment systems in the member countries of the European Union, and Croatia started applying some basic principles of the so called TARGET system.