Money transfers will be limited to 100 thousand rubles: what’s the catch

Experts spoke about the risks of limiting the amount of transfers of funds from account to account

Rosfinmonitoring intends to limit money transfers without opening an account to 100,000 rubles. Financial intelligence proposed to establish such a limit on the transfer of funds to the account with simplified identification of the client, follows from the draft law published on the official Internet portal of legal information. The restriction will affect transfers of individuals in rubles and foreign currency. As planned, this measure should help in the fight against money laundering, bank fraud and terrorist financing.

Currently, transfers of individuals without opening a bank account in the amount of more than 15 thousand rubles. carried out with simplified customer identification. At the same time, the maximum amount of such a transfer is not established by law, which, according to the authorities, does not meet international standards in the field of combating illegal transactions. This point is what Financial Intelligence wants to change. Last year, Rosfinmonitoring discussed with other departments the bar for such transfers of 60,000 rubles, but in 2023 it was decided to raise it immediately to 100,000.

It is assumed that information about the recipient will be established by the bank based on the data provided by the client, or filled in independently using the information contained in the interbank exchange systems. If there is no such information about the recipient, then the funds will simply be returned to the sender’s account. And if it is impossible to return the transfer, then the organization serving the recipient of the money will have to send a message about a suspicious transaction to Rosfinmonitoring.

Among experts, the law caused controversy. First of all, they differently assessed the adequacy of the limit. “The limit of 100,000 rubles is aimed at ensuring that ordinary transfers, for example, of labor migrants to their relatives, are not subject to restrictions, since the bar of 60,000 rubles is too low for such transfers,” believes Vladimir, an analyst at Freedom Finance Global Chernov.

There is also an opinion that the amount of 100 thousand was not chosen by chance – this is the maximum that can be transferred without interest through the Fast Payment System between two current accounts in different banks. “This will affect a fairly large number of people, including those who are abroad,” said Vadim Tkachenko, head of the vvCube consulting group. At the same time, in his opinion, the innovation is unlikely to seriously help in the fight against money laundering, since, if necessary, you can open several accounts and split transfers into smaller amounts. And according to Vladimir Kuznetsov, deputy head of the Federal Mediation Center, this measure is justified only if higher limits are set, for example, at 600 thousand rubles for transfers without opening an account. Setting a small limit will lead to negative consequences in the form of splitting transfers.

A number of experts even believe that the authorities have not voiced the true goals of the bill. So, according to the head of InDeFi Smart Bank, Sergey Mendeleev, this measure will in no way contribute to the fight against money laundering, countering the financing of terrorism, or reducing the scale of bank fraud. The real reason for the restrictions was that significantly more private capital was withdrawn from Russia in 2022 than in 2021. Recall that the net outflow of private capital from Russia last year approximately (the exact figure has not yet been named) exceeded $250 billion, while in 2021 this figure was almost 3.5 times less – $74 billion. Most likely, Rosfinmonitoring wants to have more information about people who make money transfers in the conditions when the Central Bank increased the limit of transfers abroad for individuals to $1 million last summer.

At the same time, according to Andrei Grinsky, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Economics of the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, the consequences of the measures proposed by Rosfinmonitoring may be the shrinkage of the shadow sector, which is positive for the economy. However, effectiveness against money laundering and other purposes requires further verification. If we talk about the security of transfers for individuals, then it is primarily related to the level of cryptographic protection of the integrity of an electronic message containing payment information, the expert points out. And here measures of a completely different level are required.

In general, there is a feeling that the “powerful of this world”, at least, did not voice all the goals when proposing this bill. The only consolation is that its introduction will have almost no effect on the lives of ordinary Russians, since, as statistics show, most of the transfers of individuals fit into the border of up to 40 thousand rubles.