Given the eagerness of the Bank of Russia to develop the national payment system, the cash is supposed to be withdrawn from the circulation in ten years. Thus, banknotes and coins the Russians got used to will not exist anymore and will have value for the numismatists only. “Assuming the striking development of electronic payment systems in Russia, some major changes are coming. Someday all the plastic cards and paper money will not be needed anymore. And that can happen relatively soon – in ten years from now,” Georgy Luntovsky, the Bank of Russia’s Deputy Chairman stated at the annual International Banking Congress in St. Petersburg.
According to the statistics, even now the Russians prefer electronic payments to the ordinary ones. In 2013, the volume of non-cash transactions in Russia rose by 41.4% to 13.9 trillion rubles, while the amount of retail payments increased only by 3.3% posting 20 trillion. However, the volume of electronic payments still lags behind the cash settlements. The process of national payment system creation will be completed in Q3 2015 including the plastic cards emission.
By the middle July, the central bank is supposed to name the head of the Russia’s national payment system. In accordance with the source familiar with the issue, several candidates have been already nominated. They are Universal Electronic Card CEO Alexey Popov, former head of MasterCard in Russia Andrey Korolev, United Settlement System President Oleg Tishakov, JSC Elecsnet member of the Board of Directors Yuri Maltsev, and Golden Crown payment system Chairman of the Board of Directors Nikolai Smirnov. After that, the organizers will have to choose the platform the payment system will run on.
