The Bank of Russia plans to oblige all major retail outlets to accept payments through SBP and digital rubles
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The Central Bank plans to legally oblige all retail outlets in the Russian Federation with revenue of more than 20 million rubles. per year accept payments through SBP and digital rubles. However, experts doubt that such norms will accelerate the development of SBP. The requirement to accept digital rubles seems excessive given that they will already be a mandatory means of payment.
Interfax reported that the Bank of Russia has developed a bill obliging most retail outlets to accept payments in digital rubles and through SBP. Corresponding amendments are planned to be made to the law on the protection of consumer rights, similar to how seven years ago large sellers were obliged to accept Mir cards.
According to the bill, from October 1, 2024, trade and service enterprises (TSEs) with revenue of more than 30 million rubles must provide payment through SBP, and from October 1, 2026, in digital rubles. for the previous year. A year later, these requirements will apply to merchants with revenue of more than 20 million rubles. The bill provides for a staged approach to providing merchants with the ability to make payments using SBP and digital rubles.
Large merchants do not see problems with the new requirements. Thus, the M.Video-Eldorado group positively assessed the initiative to expand the payment service through SBP: “If mandatory requirements are introduced, the company will not incur additional costs, since our infrastructure is already fully adapted.”
At the same time, according to market participants, new requirements may lead to problems for small merchants. As independent expert Maxim Mitusov explains, those who wanted and were ready have already enabled the ability to accept payments through SBP. According to his estimates, we are talking about about half of all retail points of sale: “Mostly small points or distant regions operate without SBP.” As a result, according to Mr. Mitusov, the adoption of new standards “is unlikely to seriously affect the pace of development of payment through SBP, since in online commerce everything that could be collected has already been collected.”
The head of the Financial Innovations association, Roman Prokhorov, notes that legislative measures can only ensure the possibility of making payments via SBP, but clients are not required to use it if paying by card through traditional acquiring turns out to be more profitable due to cashbacks. “Since legislative incentives alone are clearly not enough for the development of SBP, it is difficult to predict a significant increase in the rate of its application as a result of the adoption of this regulation alone,” the expert believes.
“It would be more logical to mandate the acceptance of payments using QR codes. This would be the promotion of a non-cash payment method, as they did with cards at one time – the law stated that it is mandatory to accept Mir cards,” says Alexey Voylukov, vice-president of the Association of Russian Banks. According to him, loyalty programs from the NSPK “are clearly insufficient to motivate citizens; retail outlets rarely develop their own programs to stimulate customers.”
Thus, Mr. Voylukov emphasizes, the new amendments to the legislation “will simply increase the costs of banks and small retail outlets.”
According to a Kommersant source in the banking market, in the original version of the bill there was no mention of the digital ruble; the document was entirely aimed at ensuring the acceptance of payments via SBP. He does not know the reasons for the changes.
The appearance in the bill of a requirement to accept the digital ruble in TSPs also surprised Alexey Voylukov. According to him, everyone will have to accept the digital ruble as a third form of currency, just like ordinary non-cash and cash rubles: “It is completely unclear why this obligation should be prescribed in the Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights. It is especially strange that, based on the bill, TSPs with revenues of up to 20 million rubles. will be relieved of such responsibility.”
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