ZEFIR2 e-Payments platform down on 16 April, delaying customs duty settlements

In a separate advisory issued minutes after the Single Window alert, Poland’s Ministry of Finance confirmed that ZEFIR2—the electronic payments module used to settle customs duties, VAT and excise at the border—will be unavailable for at least four hours on 16 April 2026. The downtime coincides with a scheduled database migration and affects both corporate accounts and private travellers who rely on real-time payment confirmation to release goods. Under Poland’s ‘Pay-and-Clear’ model, release of many high-value consignments is contingent on ZEFIR2 generating an instant payment reference. During the outage, importers can still submit SAD customs declarations, but clearance will be suspended until payments are processed after the system is back online. Freight forwarders warn that refrigerated products and just-in-time automotive components are particularly vulnerable.



In the meantime, anyone juggling visa formalities on top of customs paperwork can turn to VisaHQ’s dedicated Poland page (https://www.visahq.com/poland/), which lets travellers and trade teams verify entry requirements, lodge applications and monitor status updates online—helping prevent further travel disruptions while ZEFIR2 is offline.

For business travellers, the bigger headache is tax-free shopping: non-EU residents departing via Warsaw or Kraków airports will not be able to validate refund claims until the system recovers. Airport operators said extra staff would be on hand on Thursday morning to handle the expected backlog at the tax-refund counters. KPMG’s Warsaw customs practice advises multinationals to use deferred-payment guarantees where possible and to flag potential demurrage costs in their supply-chain risk registers. The firm also notes that ZEFIR2’s upgrade is a prerequisite for Poland’s switch to the EU’s Centralised Clearance for Import (CCI) regime in October, underscoring the importance of today’s maintenance work. Ministry officials emphasised that all critical data would be backed up and that users should see faster transaction speeds once the platform restarts.