The fear of storing savings on a card, which has returned to Russians, is explained

Residents of Russian cities with a population of over a million are returning to cash as a savings tool. According to statistics from one of the major insurance companies, the good old glass jars have returned to the list of the most popular methods of saving, with the largest share of cash lovers in Moscow (65%). MK found out why there was a seemingly unexpected regression in the payments industry.

It would seem that from the capital, where the digital sphere of services and payments is most developed, you would expect opposite trends: many Muscovites have completely forgotten about such a household item as a wallet, paying everywhere with cards and phones. Moreover, in recent years, although “built-in” payment interfaces for mobile devices from Apple and Google have stopped working in Russia, more new options for digital payments have appeared than before: QR codes of SBP and other payment systems, online transfers, in some cases biometrics …

Yet cash is gaining strength again. Two out of three respondents surveyed by an insurance company are ready to keep their savings in cash, depending on the situation. And only 9% of respondents fundamentally do not plan to use “paper” as a means of savings.

Moreover, for young people (under 34 years old), the percentage of trust in “cash” in Moscow is the highest – 73%. And men (71%) use the most traditional method of saving more often than women (67%). However, the latter seems to be explained by completely everyday reasons: women especially often in the 2010s abandoned wallets, which took up precious space in their purses. And for a man whose clothes usually have pockets, carrying a wallet is not a problem.

In addition to Moscow, residents of other regions of Russia saved money in cash: in Novosibirsk 78% preferred “paper”, in Ufa 73%, in Krasnodar 70%. But in Volgograd and Perm for some reason there were fewer such savings: 40% each. In general, 60% of respondents formed independent savings last year, the insurance company noted.

Other data is provided by less formal surveys on social networks: for example, among more than 2.5 thousand respondents-readers of the Telegram channel of economist Dmitry Prokofiev, 14% reported that they constantly save cash, another 13% keep a certain amount in “paper”, the rest in the bank, and 19% keep cash at home, but do not specifically accumulate it. In total, 46% of respondents have savings in cash, versus 27% who support keeping savings only in the bank, withdrawing cash only for small expenses. With a nominally lower percentage of cash supporters, their ratio with adherents of purely electronic savings approximately corresponds to the data of insurers.

“If traditionally a bank account was a means of saving, and people preferred to make payments in cash, now the situation has turned 180 degrees,” the manager of a branch of one of the federal banks in Moscow told MK. — It has often become clear that people first withdraw their salary or pension from the card, and then put money on the card as needed.

The “paper” scheme suddenly turned out to be convenient for managing a family budget, adds personal finance consultant Tatyana Mikova. “Firstly, the problem of commissions for online transfers disappears,” she explained. — Let’s say family members put all or part of their income into a common pot. In a completely digital version, these are online transfers between different persons, and a number of banks charge a commission for this above a certain limit. Secondly, a stack of bills lying in the closet clearly visualizes savings; their level is clearly visible from it. Finally, for many, it is psychologically more difficult to exchange banknotes one after another from a common “cauldron” than to easily buy goods using a card, especially with a credit limit.”

In many areas of everyday life, cash, it turns out, is still more convenient. “Are you carrying cash today? So glad!” — sellers of small non-chain stores react quite sincerely (let us remember that now they feel, perhaps, even better than chain retail). Markets, hairdressers, personal services salons, cafes and restaurants – in all such establishments cash is only welcome…

“There’s just one inconvenient moment,” says Aishat, a fruit and vegetable seller in Shchukin. – We need an exchange, and it’s not always good with it. Therefore, I always ask: take small bills from the ATM, otherwise you have to run around and change five thousand.

If you do not use cash for a long time, it suddenly turns out that many of the reflexes necessary for this have been lost. This is the habit of placing bills of different denominations in different compartments of the wallet; understanding when to change a large bill and when to hold it, and knowing at what time of day it is better to give large bills to someone and small ones to someone.

Finally, the ability to distinguish these very bills at a glance has been forgotten: quite recently (instead of more expensive coins) half-forgotten notes of 10 and 5 rubles appeared, the latter of which had not been in mass circulation for so long that people began to confuse it with the thousandth by color.

“But cash is still less universal in payments,” says Tatyana Mikova. — Markets are good, but in order to buy on marketplaces, and now you can hardly do without them, you cannot do without a bank account and a card. And another most important industry is transport: you can’t pay in cash on buses, you can’t top up a transport card remotely without a bank account (you’ll have to stand at the ticket office).

That is why the renaissance is more pronounced in the capital than in the regions, MK’s interlocutor emphasized. After all, far from Moscow, often the main way to purchase goods of non-everyday demand is purchases on marketplaces with delivery to the point of delivery of orders. And this requires cards – no matter how nice cash is to everyone with its complete anonymity of transactions.