ATMs can’t keep up with money

The Central Bank plans to put into circulation banknotes of 1,000 and 5,000 rubles by the end of the year. new sample. Meanwhile, experts believe that only about 40% of Russian ATMs are ready to accept them. According to market participants, in the current environment, the introduction of new banknotes could lead to a surge in fraud and technical failures.

The Bank of Russia plans to announce the launch of two modernized denominations this year – 1,000 and 5,000, Arkady Tron, General Director of Goznak, said in an interview with RBC TV.

As the Central Bank explained to Kommersant, banknotes with a face value of 1 thousand and 5 thousand rubles. will be put into circulation in 2023, 500 rubles – in 2024, 10 and 50 rubles – in 2025.

“The modernized banknotes with a face value of 100 rubles, presented in 2022 … are already gradually being put into circulation, replacing the dilapidated ones,” the Bank of Russia specified.

According to Aleksey Voilukov, Vice President of the Association of Banks of Russia (ADB), today the banking infrastructure is on average 70-75% ready to accept new hundred rubles, but this does not mean that it can be quickly adapted to 1,000 and 5,000 banknotes. rub. “Each banknote has an image that is flashed in the equipment that recognizes the banknote, if for flashing the image of new banknotes 100 rubles. foreign specialists who produce this equipment came, then they will again have to be called in to flash new images, ”explains the expert.

If Russian banks managed to obtain software that can be used to “flash” images, everything will turn out “somewhat faster”, but in any case, at least six months are needed, Alexey Voylukov believes.

Today, only 40% of Russian ATMs can accept new banknotes, says Kommersant’s interlocutor in the banking market.

“With the acceptance of banknotes of 100 rubles. the situation is slightly better, because the image of the banknote was obtained for the devices of one of the brands that left Russia for parallel imports. But for new banknotes, this will not work. If they are launched in 2023, then most ATMs will only issue banknotes, but not accept,” he says.

Meanwhile, the adaptation of ATMs to new banknotes is only part of the problem, and not the main one, market participants specify. “The most important thing is whether the counting and sorting machines, including those at the Central Bank itself, are ready to recognize new banknotes, since it is with their help that fakes are detected and removed from circulation,” emphasized the interlocutor of Kommersant from among the bankers. Machines determine how many banknotes of what denomination were collected, how many were destroyed, it’s impossible to do it all manually, says a Kommersant source: “The Central Bank has complexes of the German company Giesecke & Devrient, it’s not so easy to replace them, since these are unique complexes that are produced piece by piece to order, a room is specially built for them, they have a capacity of 40 banknotes per second. Goznak, according to him, reported several years ago that it had begun producing Bars-5 counting and sorting machines of “medium productivity” with the ability to produce up to ten devices a year.

The Central Bank clarified that the installation of domestic software on the equipment of banks and trade and service enterprises is “practically completed” – almost 100% of counting and sorting and deposit machines have been adapted for domestic equipment, “work continues” on imported equipment.

At the end of last year, there were more than 170,000 ATMs in Russia, and 60% of them, according to ADB, were American NCR and Diebold Nixdorf devices.

Experts do not understand why, in the presence of such technical problems, banknotes of a new design should be put into circulation right now. As Viktor Dostov, head of the Association of Participants in the Market of Electronic Money and Money Transfers, notes, the introduction of new banknotes is usually associated with the improvement of counterfeiting methods or the planned replacement of technologies and materials. Meanwhile, according to the Bank of Russia, in the first quarter of 2023, 3,018 counterfeit banknotes were discovered in the Russian Federation, which is 62.88% less year-on-year.

The head of the board of the Financial Innovations Association, Roman Prokhorov, agrees that “the situation clearly does not require the urgent introduction of new banknotes.” However, he notes, “KPI must be met, and Goznak does not issue money free of charge.” As a result, in the process of introducing new banknotes, experts expect a surge in fraudulent transactions and failures of underconfigured ATM validators.

Maxim Buylov