Payments are creaking – Kommersant FM
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It has become more difficult for entrepreneurs to send money abroad, even compared to 2022. Promsvyazbank and Opora Rossii conducted a survey among Russian businessmen. It turns out that SMEs are much more likely to encounter difficulties when transacting cross-border. Payments often get stuck or are returned to the senders. In addition, legal entities complain about increased fees for banking services. Moreover, the use of friendly jurisdictions and currencies does not relieve business from problems. Why is this happening? Ivan Khorushevsky sorted it out.
It seemed like the challenges businesses faced last year were unprecedented. But now Kommersant FM’s interlocutors call them only preparations for larger-scale problems. If in the fall of 2022 only a third of companies complained about refusal to carry out transactions, now half of them already do.
The same number of companies faced payment freezes. The share of entrepreneurs who are dissatisfied with the high, almost prohibitive, in their words, bank commissions has increased from 20% to 40%. The director of the fashion house Raschini, Sergei Vikulin, attributes their increase to the withdrawal of many credit institutions from the cross-border transfer market:
“The reduction in the number of opportunities, according to the law of the market, often leads to a very high increase in the cost of services for those who continue to provide them. This is indeed one of the very big problems, probably now I would put it in first place. This is associated with logistical difficulties and increased delivery costs. We missed four payments this week alone.”
Naturally, entrepreneurs who send dollars and euros abroad most often encounter problems. But there are no more than a third of them left. The rest are consistently “turning around” to the East and converting contracts into dirhams, rupees, yuan, Turkish lira and even Uzbek soums.
Accordingly, such businessmen make payments through counterparty banks in friendly jurisdictions. However, in reality it turns out that they cannot be called a safe haven either. Local credit institutions have tightened compliance, which is why transactions often freeze or do not reach the addressee at all, complains the executive director of Transasia Logistics, Kirill Latinsky:
“Now it is mandatory to request HS codes for those goods for which transactions are taking place. They are checked for compliance with the sanctions packages, because of this the money is suspended and returned. All this is connected with the fear of receiving secondary sanctions. The clouds are gathering, and businesses in this format are constantly looking for new options. Companies open accounts in 10 banks in various currencies.”
As a result, businessmen also periodically choose a complex route for transactions: through several counterparties. But this only adds problems to entrepreneurs. The more links there are in the financial chain, the longer it takes money to reach foreign partners. Sometimes there are obstacles along the way in the form of losses during currency conversion, notes Sergei Demin, head of the Mlesna tea company:
“Raiffeisenbank is still sending payments to Sri Lanka. Transactions take place quite quickly, but only using old transaction passports that were opened before all these events. If Raiffeisenbank did not help us, then Gazprombank works with Indian rupees. But we are interacting with Sri Lanka, and accordingly, the chain is lengthening, because the money first goes to India and only then there. And the rupees are different, and the exchange rate is different.”
There is little optimism among Kommersant FM’s interlocutors. According to their forecasts, sending payments abroad will become increasingly difficult. But businesses are adapting, taking into account the increased timing of operations or looking for alternatives. And finds them, for example, in cryptocurrency payments.
Everything is clear with us – Telegram channel “Kommersant FM”.
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