Russians will be limited to use cash

It’s not a secret that amount of the cash turnover in developed countries is significantly limited. There are many reasons for it, among which: under non-cash money turnover the transparence of economy rises, shady reciprocal payments decrease, this leads to increase of tax performance, decline in service charge for infrastructure on issue and upkeep of bank notes and coins, it is easier to steel the money from your purse than virtual one; it’s convenient to use cards. Cardholders are offered all kinds of bonuses and discounts in worldwide trade and hotel chains.

Our country gradually turns from cash to non-cash turnover. Development of acquiring infrastructure, ATMs, mobile self-service offices, so-called «electronic money» works towards this change. However, according to the senior vice-president of the Central Bank of Russia Georgy Luntovsky, the interest of cash payment amounts more than 90% of all money turnover. Certainly, this is surplus and economically unjustified.

In order to drive the situation from the dead-lock, the Ministry of Finance produced a document that will decrease cash payments by law. According to the bill, quantitative restriction on cash payments between individuals and legal persons with the sum more than 600 thousand rubles, with the following reduction to 300 thousand rubles is to be imposed from 2014. Moreover, the companies with the turnover that exceeds 600 thousand rubles would be obliged to take bank cards everywhere.

Central Bank’s Governor Elvira Nabiullina endorsed the initiative of the colleagues from the Government, but stated that it is necessary to give the right to set limitations on eligible sum of cash payments to a megacontroller.

Apart from obvious advantages of corresponding innovations, some experts express apprehensions for the fact that now even in big cities, not considering province, the network of taking the plastic cards is underdeveloped. There is also a problem of protection of virtual money against fraudsters that develop different schemes of their theft up to chip-reading devices. All other things being equal, we should admit though that electronic money are protected more than cash in one’s own pocket, and offered innovations would just speed up the change of the companies, including retail networks, over to non-cash payment.