No time to hand over the currency - Newspaper Kommersant No. 14 (7459) dated 01/26/2023

No time to hand over the currency - Newspaper Kommersant No. 14 (7459) dated 01/26/2023



On January 25, Raiffeisenbank announced that it would stop accepting cash dollars and euros at its ATMs from February 1. The bank explained that "the low share of technically complex foreign exchange transactions affects the availability of ATMs for transactions with rubles, which are more often needed by customers."

In other words, currency is handed over to ATMs from time to time, and for each type of currency you need to keep at least one cassette for receiving and one more for issuing banknotes, in total - four cassettes. But each of them could be used to work with rubles, which would help reduce the frequency of cash collectors going to an ATM and, consequently, the bank's costs. At the same time, the bank does not refuse to accept customers' cash currency to their accounts in branches.

Perhaps Raiffeisenbank's reluctance to "bent down" for every "unfriendly" cent is due to its special position in the Russian market. From the very beginning of the geopolitical crisis, he, among the few subsidiary foreign banks, was transferred and carried the currency. Now, after the winding down of Citibank's business, the downsizing of Unicreditbank's offices, the transfer of Rosbank and HCF-Bank to Russian owners, Raiffeisenbank has remained almost the only representative of foreign credit institutions working with Russians. Through which they are guaranteed to be able to transfer currency abroad, including to unfriendly countries. Therefore, the bank may well choose how it is ready to accept dollars and euros from its customers.

His Russian colleagues cannot afford such a selective attitude towards the methods of obtaining cash currency from unfriendly countries. According to news agencies, Alfa-Bank and Rosbank, which are on the US blacklist, are not going to stop accepting cash through ATMs. Banks "Zenith" and "Uralsib" adhere to a similar position.

Another question is that for many Russian banks, as well as for their clients, the idea of ​​accepting cash dollars and euros at ATMs remains purely theoretical. In some cases, it is impossible to transfer them abroad, while in others it is associated with noticeable difficulties and limitations. It is also not possible to use a currency card of a Russian bank abroad. And it is no longer possible to pick them up - the restriction on withdrawing cash deposited to a bank account after March 9, 2022 remains. Unless exchanged for a friendly currency or rubles. Of course, dollars and euros can be placed on a deposit, but no one guarantees whether the restriction on cash withdrawals will be canceled by the end of its term. Especially in the context of the ban on the supply of banknotes from the US and the EU.

So it's probably better to have currency on hand than hypothetical currency interest in the sky.



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