Imagine: you paid your utilities at a Ukrposhta branch, put the receipt in your pocket — and didn't notice it falling near your apartment building. Now on that piece of paper, besides the payment amount, is your full name, tax number, and full bank card number. This exact scenario prompted Ukrposhta to publicly call on customers: receipts go home, and into a shredder or fire, not into a street trash bin.
Since August 1, the National Bank has required the company to print these details on receipts for utilities and other payments. Formally — a legal requirement, and Ukrposhta is complying, though "categorically disagrees," as the company's CEO Igor Smilyanskyy stated.
Why this is a practical problem, not just a scandal
Previously, a receipt confirmed the fact of payment. Now it's essentially a mini-personal dossier with data sufficient for social engineering or fraud attempts: with a name, tax number, and card number, a criminal gets a serious head start for a "bank calling" scam or signing up for services in someone else's name.
The simplest protection offered by the company itself is not to leave receipts at branch counters, in jacket pockets, or trash bins near your house, but to take them home and destroy them there. It's a low-tech but effective recommendation in conditions where the regulator hasn't changed the requirement, only intensified the discussion around it.
"Why does one of the most digitalized countries in the world — with Diia and digital services — simultaneously return to 50-centimeter receipts with full personal data? The question is for the regulator," said Igor Smilyanskyy.
What lies behind the legal conflict
The formal dispute over receipt format actually accompanies a deeper conflict: Ukrposhta wants to obtain a banking license, while the NBU demands the dismissal of Smilyanskyy from his position as CEO — a requirement the government has still not fulfilled. Chair of the Verkhovna Rada's Finance Committee Danylo Hetmantsev directly stated that the confrontation has become personal due to relations between NBU head Andriy Pyshnyy and Smilyanskyy.
In this context, the new receipt requirement looks less like concern for payment transparency and more like another episode of bureaucratic infighting, the price of which is paid by ordinary customers — with their personal data on a scrap of paper.
What customers should know
- If you've already provided your tax number to Ukrposhta — during "Winter Support," social benefits, or energy-saving bulbs — you don't need to provide it again.
- If the data isn't in the system, the operator will ask for it once at your next payment.
- The company recommends not leaving receipts at the branch and destroying them at home — with a shredder or fire, not simply throwing them in the general trash.
The question that remains open: will public pressure and appeals to the ombudsman force the NBU to reconsider the requirement, or will the personal data of millions of customers remain on paper receipts while two executives squabble over a banking license?
