Alla Bakina , Director of the Department of National Payment Systems of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, said that the pilot version of the fast payments system for individuals will work on January 28, 2019: “We will start on January 28, the launch of the commercial operation of the system begins on this date. Until February 28, banks will operate on a limited number of customers, and from February 28, the system will already operate under a full list of operations for all customers of banks that join the system, Alla Bakina said. “From January 28, in order for banks to adapt their operational processes to work in the system, there will be this period of a so-called limited number of customers so that banks can carry out relevant internal work.”

SBP allows you to quickly transfer money from one account to another in a simplified form, including by phone number or email address. Payment is made within 15 seconds. “Unlike card transfers, you will not need to enter the number of the bank card itself, which minimizes the likelihood of error when dialing from both the sender and the recipient,” explained Alexey Panferov, deputy chairman of the board of Sovcombank.

Now 12 banks and credit organizations are participating in the system, six of them announced their readiness to start working with a limited number of clients in three days:

• Tinkoff Bank,
• Alfa Bank,
• Bank "Ak Bars",
• Sovcombank,
• Promsvyazbank,
• Rosbank.

RG Infographics: Anton Binders / Igor Zubkov

Which users will participate in pilot testing? This remains at the discretion of the bank. For example, Rosbank at the start of the SBP will identify “a loyal sample of customers interested in actively using the platform’s capabilities, which will provide a representative response about efficiency, relevance and customer value,” said Lidiya Kashirin, deputy director of the retail products and marketing department.

Gazprombank, VTB, QIWI, Raiffeisenbank, SKB-Bank and RNKO “Payment Center” also take part in the “pilot”, they will start accepting applications from citizens a little later, but they will also fully earn from February 28. Then on the sites and in the mobile applications of banks there will appear buttons with the symbol “Fast Payment Systems”.



Later another 40 banks will join , now preparatory work is being carried out with them. Among them are the IBC (will connect in the II quarter of 2019), Absolut Bank (in the III quarter). "Home Credit" (determined with the dates in February), "Avangard" (spring).

The operator and settlement center of the SBP is the Bank of Russia, the operational payment and clearing center - NSPK. The project is implemented by the FinTech Association (AFL).

Until the end of the year, payments in the SBP will be made without commission. Since 2020, the Bank of Russia has set such tariffs for banks: 50 kopecks for the receiving bank and the sending bank for transfers up to 1000 rubles, two rubles for amounts from 1000 to 3000 and three rubles for transfers from 6000 to 600,000 rubles . (threshold of operations within the system). No member bank has yet disclosed the size of client commissions.

Now the fee for transfers from card to card is on average 1−1.5% of the amount .

The SBP will work through Internet banks and mobile applications of the participating banks, they will simply have additional items; in the presence of accounts in different banks, it will be necessary to decide on what account they will be sent to.

Volume of transfers

In the hands of citizens of the Russian Federation over 268 million payment cards (almost two per person, including infants).

According to Aleksey Kurzyakov, Head of the Department for Development of Remote Banking Services of the IBC, the expected share of payments in the first year of the system may amount to 20% of all transfers of this type, in the next few years it may increase to 50–60%. Vitaly Kostyukevich, head of the digital business and retail products department at Absolut Bank, noted that about 50% of the card-to-card transfers from their bank’s clients will pass through the SBP.

If these forecasts are justified, the volume of transfers will be calculated in trillions of rubles. According to the Central Bank, in the first nine months of 2018, the Russians transferred 19.2 trillion rubles from one card to another. Half of this amount per year is more than 10 trillion rubles. Even with a minimal commission, this is serious money.

The total amount of transfers through the SBP in the first year may amount to about 5–10 trillion rubles, agreed the chairman of the Electronic Money Association Viktor Dostov.

The SBP developers intend to develop the system: in the future they promise to make payments via instant messengers, social networks, QR codes, payments to legal entities and state organizations.

"Sberbank" against

The only bank that has so far refused to join the new system - Sberbank, which has its own system of p2p payments from card to card. On January 23, German Gref commented on the proposal of the Central Bank to make mandatory the connection to the system of all significant Russian banks:

We will discuss with the Central Bank. I have already said many times that we are interested in maintaining competitive conditions, no one gave us this system, we actually invented it and were the first to introduce it. This artificial quasi-competition with the help of a regulator does not seem optimal to me, but we are ready for any variant. It seems to us that this is just an extra step, anyway a commercial system is being created in parallel ... If they made such a decision, they did. We still do not understand what kind of platform, we need to explore it. Nobody talked to us about the obligatory connection, you will need to look at the benefits that will be received not only by us, but also by our clients. We study - it will be clear what to do in the future.