The fog of nationalistic fervor — will take years to revert, with the key ingredient of a respected debate fomented by civil society missing. — Russian Parliament deputies are besting one another with bills that render any form of debate impossible: punishable by years of imprisonment, extending black marks of unemployment for those who won’t be able to respond by finding a different job, leave for other country. …

A while ago this blog reviewed the repercussions for Russian payments market after major international card schemes suspended RU-issued cards from March 10th, 2022 Payment regulator pushes all banks in Russia to connect to SBPay — a (so far poor) Faster Payment… Major acquirers will undoubtedly sponsor their own-in app payment techmedium.com The story of contactless / faster payments in Russia — and its future after 2022 And the need to augment / rethink what has relegated it solely for interbank transfersmedium.com

Relying on credit facilities to reap multiplier effect of an emerging market ecommerce player listed on NASDAQ will suffer — Ozon was a steady construct before it bet on the growing international investors’ interest in emerging market consumer platforms. …

The backstory: Yoomoney was born during the times card payments were not well placed on the web — banks declining online payments, 3D Secure being in its infancy and fraud rampant: virtual prepaid pioneered by Qiwi and Yandex Money were literally door-openers for early internet-consumers. As the business progressed, Sberbank implemented a…

Both contributed a lot to mobile payment and online banking adoption using Apple and Androd platforms. Rolling back to web is rife with risks and UX issues — The situation is not new: VTB being censured earlier last month pushed both Apple and Google to suspend publishing of VTB apps on their platforms, pushing VTB to announce to all their customers 15+ million users, that managing of their finances can now only happen via web.

A quick archive search for notes carefully collected and stored — It appeared as another cool method congruent with a mobile-totting and tweeting / instagraming personae: first via a form of contactless card payments promoted by the schemes, as they were pushing banks to rollover on EMV-contactless plastic. Contactless cards promo served a major role: teaching cardholders to start doing menial…

Major acquirers will undoubtedly sponsor their own-in app payment tech — After major card schemes halted their operations in Russia, NSPK, a local scheme operator, continues support of local transactions, while banks prolonged duration of all currently issued cards (to not lose precious currency on re-issuance, paid in USD / EUR to established card personalisation bureaus), since all transactions are still…

A champion of operational efficiency seek to test the waters of stable-coins to drive down its cash processing costs — I am saddened that some news outlets (Business Insider — Article) are willing to publish “red herring” articles to support an already heated debate about the war in Ukraine — and add that anything that Russian business is trying to do — is to solely evade sanctions imposed on it.

Shuttle and ecommerce drop-ship business will cover the made-up problem of paying for international services — Before legitimate commerce and payment businesses in Russia — accepted in the international concert after Soviet Union, there were always grey schemes — costly, time-consuming, risky (as one did not transact with the original provider herself). In the advent of online business, one had to seek money transfer systems, deal…