The digital ruble costs a pretty penny – Kommersant FM

Banks are calculating the costs of introducing a digital ruble. Rosbank estimated its expenses at 150 million rubles. in two years, one of the organization’s top managers, Olga Makhova, told Vedomosti. According to her, the largest investments required the creation of a special infrastructure for settlements. Operations take place on a special platform of the Central Bank, banks connect to it and then act only as intermediaries between the regulator and clients. However, this function turned out to be burdensome for credit companies. Organizations had to, as Ms. Makhova noted, “deploy complex cryptography” and rebuild the information security system, which required hiring highly specialized employees. Significant funds were also spent on paying for their labor.

Sanctions have added to the problems for credit institutions, noted independent financial market expert Andrei Barkhota:

“For banks that were involved in the implementation of the digital ruble, the issue of infrastructure development has become a very pressing issue. These are, first of all, IT improvements, installation of new equipment, processing of client data, and a mechanism for integrating transactions with the digital ruble into a mobile application.

These are all huge projects, they are comparable to the supply of new equipment, for example, ATMs.

In addition, it so happened that the introduction of the digital ruble was due to sanctions restrictions, which gave rise to the problem of import substitution and technological migration.

So hundreds of millions of rubles for the transition to a digital ruble are indeed very significant costs. For other banks with a larger customer base, it may cost even more.

At the same time, the key rate will not in any way affect the cost of liabilities in digital rubles. These are not deposits, but some funds in settlements. In this regard, banks are in their own way interested in transferring part of client balances into these assets, then for them the cost of funding becomes practically zero.

If we take this circumstance into account, the payback period becomes more tangible, and theoretically, if everything goes on like this, it will be two to three years.”

However, at first, the introduction of the digital ruble may result in losses for banks. Market players risk losing up to 50 billion rubles. per year, according to analysts from Yakov and Partners.

The fact is that credit institutions will lose part of the income from commissions for acquiring and other non-cash payments. After all, transactions with electronic currency will be free for citizens, and they plan to charge only 0.3% of the payment amount from businesses.

Therefore, banks may resist the spread of the digital ruble, noted Stanislav Volkov, managing director of the NKR agency:

“The story can be compared with the advent of the Faster Payments System, when, if not for all banks, then for very many, this undermined part of their revenue base, and certain resistance arose from market players.

You can just see how long this resistance was broken; Sberbank resisted to the last.

Here, perhaps, there will be a similar story: most organizations will nevertheless carry out all the necessary measures in a fairly short time under the fear that they will simply be cut off from the refinancing system or some serious punitive measures will be applied.

Large players will be able to delay this issue for a relatively long time, citing their technical difficulties.”

After the distribution of the digital ruble, consumers risk being left without cashback for purchases, but with increased rates on deposits.

The Central Bank launched settlements in electronic currency in August. Until 2025, they will be carried out in test mode, while only 13 credit institutions are connected to the regulator’s special platform.

More than 500 individuals and 30 companies in a dozen Russian cities are participating in the experiment, although the Central Bank did not specify which ones.

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Ivan Khorushevsky