Sberbank’s new ruble transfer service to Iran may be useful for tourists and merchants

Sberbank has launched money transfers for Russians to Iran to individuals and legal entities. The bank believes that the service will be in demand primarily by tourists – the tourist flow to Iran tripled in the first quarter. However, experts believe that it can be much more useful for the operations of legal entities – both large corporations and small wholesalers.

As Kommersant was told in Sberbank, transfers in rubles to Iran became available to its individual clients. They are sent to the account number in Pasargad Bank, the standard commission for international transfers is 1% of the amount. Clients can make transfers to both individuals and legal entities. The limit for one transaction and per day is set at 1 million rubles. “The transfer service to Iran is new, the demand has yet to be assessed, the service is primarily designed for tourists,” the bank says.

In December 2022, VTB launched transfers to Iran. However, the bank carries out them in Iranian rials, which can be purchased in the Internet bank or mobile application. The maximum transfer amount from VTB is much larger – 20 million rubles. for one transaction and up to $1 million in equivalent per month. The commission is also 1% of the transfer amount (no more than 200 thousand Iranian rials, approximately 460 rubles).

Aleksey Khranilov, head of the “Transfers” department of the transactional retail business department of VTB, noted that, compared with other countries of the far abroad and the CIS, the demand for sending funds to Iran is still small. “Mostly users pay for travel services and training,” he explained.

As Olga Ulyanova, an independent banking expert, believes, the transfer service to Iran for individuals is mainly designed for mutual tourist flow, and “although it is growing very dynamically, it is still difficult to expect that the country will take any significant share in the tourist exchange market with Russia in the near future. replacing more traditional trends. According to the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (ATOR), in the first quarter of 2023, “10.4 thousand citizens of the Russian Federation visited Iran for all purposes of the visit, in the past there were only 3.4 thousand people.”

However, according to experts, even p2p transfers may well be used to establish trade with Iranian counterparties. The head of the Association of Participants in the Market of Electronic Money and Money Transfers, Viktor Dostov, notes that the transfers of individuals to Iran can be used by small traders – new “shuttles”. “Real transfers to Iranian resident individuals, it seems to me, will be of little demand,” Mr. Dostov believes.

At the same time, transfers to Iran for legal entities may have much more prospects. “Due to the fact that Iran has been under Western sanctions for a long time, channels for circumventing these sanctions in order to conduct international settlements have long been established there and work effectively, because sanctions can slow down or redirect some business flows, but they are not capable of completely blocking them” Olga Ulyanova explains. “There is no trade imbalance between Russia and Iran, as with India, and trade and financial flows in both directions are very intense,” Viktor Dostov notes. According to the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in 2022, trade between Russia and Iran amounted to $4.9 billion, 20% higher than in 2021.

Moreover, according to Olga Ulyanova, restrictions on the same operations with Russian oil, for example, are forcing Western countries to look at Iranian oil with greater appetite, and this is not the only example of a willingness to compromise. Therefore, the expert adds, “taking into account the friendly nature of Russian-Iranian relations, trade and settlements between countries, including those for transit purposes, will grow many times over and may become very significant, if not yet.”

Maxim Buylov