On July 1, 2018 the so-called split payment mechanism was introduced into the Polish legal system. Split payment refers to the splitting of invoice payments in B2B relations between a supplier’s current bank account and a VAT account, which is automatically opened by banks as an account directly linked to current accounts. Funds constituting the VAT portion of an invoice payment are transferred to and from such VAT accounts. The split payment mechanism in Poland is not obligatory.  Purchasers of goods or services can decide whether they want to split their payments in two parts, with the net amount transferred to the supplier’s current account and the VAT amount credited to the VAT account. The use of the funds on VAT accounts is restricted by law.

The introduction of split payment into Polish law has significant practical implications for financing, especially factoring and all secured transactions where an assignment of rights is used.