Along with Qiwi Bank, part of the settlement infrastructure stopped in Russia

The consequences of the revocation of licenses of Qiwi Bank, one of the top hundred in the Russian Federation by assets, were most clearly manifested not even among its clients, but in the operation of the country’s payment infrastructure as a whole. It was the bank’s role in transferring funds, and not financial problems, that caused the regulator’s decision. As a result, problems have arisen throughout Russia with payments for housing and communal services and cellular communication services, in mobile applications and gaming services, even taxis. The situation was partly saved by the fact that many of the affected companies, although not all of them, had alternative payment service providers.

The Central Bank’s decision to revoke the license of Qiwi Bank (see Kommersant Online) led to large-scale payment failures in a variety of business areas – from housing and communal services and gaming to taxi companies and mobile application stores. The fact is that other credit institutions, including large ones, and other financial companies entered into agreements with Qiwi Bank to make payments in favor of third-party counterparties. According to Kommersant’s interlocutors in the market, the volume of such transactions was “significant,” but they could not provide accurate estimates.

As one of the bankers explains, Qiwi Bank issued a whitelabel payment protocol to many banks for housing and communal services and a number of other categories of clients.

According to him, banks often connected them, so the scale of problems in the market is not limited to the cases that have become known today. “Usually the bank keeps one or two such providers for all services,” the banker clarifies. According to his assessment, credit institutions will be able to switch relatively quickly to new providers, but “all banks will now have fewer of them.”

In particular, clients of Raiffeisenbank, Gazprombank, OTP-Bank, Sovcombank, and Metallinvestbank suffered. It was impossible to pay for mobile communications and other services of some companies in their applications. Banks reported that they are working to fix the problems and are reconnecting to an alternative provider. Gazprombank assured Kommersant on the evening of February 21 that “most of the service providers have already been transferred to other aggregators.” Sovcombank “is making settings to switch to an alternative provider.”

The Central Bank does not hide that it was the payment infrastructure of Qiwi Bank that became the subject of the regulator’s claims: “The bank’s business model was largely based on conducting high-risk transactions on electronic wallets and transfers, including for the shadow gambling business, crypto exchangers, as well as transfers stolen funds in favor of droppers and other illegal financial services. We carried out a lot of systematic work with the bank to reduce its involvement in such operations, but the bank constantly used various schemes and ways to circumvent our measures.”

However, as a result, difficulties arose for completely official services. Mobile operators responded to payment problems by mainly recommending transferring funds through their own mobile applications. Tele2 reported a decrease in the share of top-ups specifically through Qiwi terminals; the problem, according to the operator’s representative, “has not yet provoked mass calls to the support line.” VimpelCom assured Kommersant that the revocation of the license from Qiwi Bank “does not have a significant impact on account replenishment operations.” MTS declined to comment; MegaFon and Rostelecom did not respond to requests.

According to one of Kommersant’s interlocutors in the market, Qiwi Bank itself “has long since moved away from working with large corporate clients.” The problems affected the Bank’s payment systems Rapida and Contact, as well as the subsidiary company Qiwi Technologies (operating under the Taxiaggregator brand), which had 2.6 thousand taxi fleets in service. The company reported that it began integrating with Tochka Bank instead.

Qiwi made it possible to pay for the services of content providers and top up their wallets.

After global payment systems left Russia in 2022, this method remained one of the few options available, for example, to users of the Steam video game store in Russia. Steam replenishment is no longer available. However, the head of the Organization for the Development of the Video Game Industry Vasily Ovchinnikov clarified that although the payment method through Qiwi was “one of the most common due to the low commission,” similar services are offered by mobile operators and other e-wallet operators.

Liters reported that payments through Qiwi accounted for “a fairly large number” of payments from service clients. Now the platform “promptly” informs users about the need to use other methods, they clarified there, and also plans to set up “payment through another payment system.”

The blocking of payments by Qiwi Bank created systemic problems for users of Huawei smartphones: they stopped making transactions when paying for goods and services on the Internet or in their own app store AppGallary.

At the moment, users write, the company offers payment only through mobile operators. Kommersant’s interlocutor in the electronics market explained that payments in the Huawei application store in the Russian Federation were made through acquiring Qiwi. He believes that the company “will soon connect to another Russian acquiring company.”

According to the head of the board of the Financial Innovations association, Roman Prokhorov, “there is someone who can quickly pick up the Qiwi business,” however, “it will take several days to switch interaction channels.”

As for stuck payments, settlements for them, as a rule, take place no later than the next day, so the volume of such funds is unlikely to be large, the expert believes. He clarifies that “the payer is considered to have made the payment from the moment the money is deposited, then there are the risks of the recipients and payment infrastructure organizations, taking into account the terms of the agreements between them.” Some of the payments suspended due to failures may be returned, adds one of the market participants, since in some cases “security deposits are held against them.”

The goals of limiting shadow business declared by the Central Bank could also be achieved. Market participants confirm transfers through Qiwi in favor of crypto exchangers. According to Kommersant’s interlocutors in the financial market, Qiwi was the largest channel for withdrawing funds into cryptocurrency in the Russian Federation. For such transactions, Qiwi wallets have traditionally been used (not linked to bank accounts). “It was the Qiwi wallet that was one of the most popular services for buying and selling cryptocurrency, allowing you to withdraw funds to the shadow sector,” says one of Kommersant’s interlocutors. In particular, Qiwi was the most affordable in terms of deposit and withdrawal amounts (from 5–10 thousand rubles).

Conducting transactions with shadow businesses and cryptocurrency in itself is not grounds for revocation, clarifies Igor Dubov, partner at the law firm Iontsev, Lyakhovsky and Partners. According to him, the Central Bank, as a rule, analyzes high-risk activities from the point of view of bank stability. According to the managing partner of the Dmitry Donskoy Financial Group, Dmitry Kurbatsky, “in this case, the regulator showed that the problem of shadow payments is still on the agenda and extreme measures can be applied to players in this field, regardless of size.”

Olga Sherunkova, Maxim Buylov, Yuri Litvinenko, Yulia Yurasova, Ksenia Dementieva