Originally cast as a vulture payday industry, it remodelled to support digial payday loans and lite e-commerce lending — Pointing to shrewd and emotionless rebuild of regional supply chain networks, e-commerce load of (largely medium-band priced goods) imported to Russia from China is slowly recovering. And it shows interesting correlation with a well established micro-finance industry. Originally operating in the shadows and exempt from Russian Central Bank regulation in…

If was an epitome of FS innovation for 2 decades — and now seeds ideas and leaders across the world — Tinkoff was an outlier even in a boisterous financial service industry of Russia. It broke barriers, changed status-quo like almost no-one (apart from Russian Standard Bank that pioneered fast POS loans in early 2000). What started as an experiment in 2006 by a serial entrepreneur in food and drinks —…

Evolution of payments today and in near future: tools, services and platforms all point to the numbers game of improving the attribution — and redemption of marketing outreach. — (1) A story where payers and those accepting payments constantly change places as both intermittently lead the evolution of payments: Without going too deep in the backstory of payments (lest we discuss the theory of fiat money as either a exchange token or a trust medium enabling the underlying exchange of goods): the last 80 years of payments using cards was about simplifying acceptance of either money that consumers carried…

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.