The idea of establishing the internal processing in Russia (getting, interchanging and processing information about the transactions in the payment system) appeared at the same time with its getting developments into actual practical use of the national payment system. The requirement of that system became apparent after the U.S.A. introduced economic sanctions against the set of Russian banks.

Such great credit institutions as Sberbank, Alfabank, Uralsib and Bank of Moscow discuss the possibility of creating the interconnection among themselves that will allow making transactions using plastic cards without using payment system. Foreign transactions will be carried out as usual by MasterCard and Visa.

At present there is a technical frontier of connecting the internal processing in the single of not more than 10 banks from its top 100 in terms of assets. It is necessary to develop our own national processing that would be optimized for such volumes of transactions in order to make the whole banking system exchange information freely. However, it will take time and essential allocations to develop it.

The structure being established should be at regulation. Likely these functions will be subject to Central Bank that should acts as the national processing and clearing center.

There is a high probability that this idea will be widely understood by the country’s leadership and financial power, as introducing its own payment system without the national processing can be called just a half solution.

After the RF has co-opted half-island Crimea, financial system of the country feels increased pressured. The talk about sanctions and their imminent tightening excite the market. Limitations have reached those regions, which must be out of politics. So recently the leading payment systems in the world Visa and MasterCard (which belong to commercial companies) have withdrawn services of several Russian banks (including «AB «ROSSIYA», «Sobinbank»), put in the sanctions list of the Administration of the USA. These credit institutions are inside the top 100 of the largest banks, there are many our fellow citizens and legal entities among their clients. It has become apparent that the situation, when there is no own processing centre and payment system in such large economics, endangers national security.

The talk about practical realization of settlements domestically, based on national payment system, has long been having. In 2011 the Federal law «About national payment system» was adopted, which regulates the order of rendering of payment services, including remittance, using of electronic payment facilities, activity of subjects of national payment system, and also sets requirements to organizations and working of payment systems, regulatory regime and supervision in national payment system.

In the beginning of April, immediately after later limitations affected the banking system, the President V.V. Putin has demanded from financial management and the Head of the Central bank to make all reasonable efforts and report about results within a month: how will the banks realize the national payment system (NPS) in practical part, implementation phases, start data in test and real mode and other focused questions.

The Central bank has organized a working group on creation of NPS, the largest Russian banks and banking associations have joined it: «Sberbank» (Savings bank), «Bank Moskvy» (Bank of Moscow), «Uralsib», «VTB 24», «Gazprombank», «Russky standart», «TKS-bank», «Assotsiatsiya rossiiskih bankov» (Association of Russian banks) and «Assotsiatsiya regionalnyh bankov» (Association of regional banks). As examples of what the NPS could look like the Central bank considers the systems «Zolotaya korona», «PRO100» and Union Сard. Bankers could choose one of them or offer another one. For this there will be conducted a poll in the banking community.

At the suggestion of the Head of «Sberbank» German Gref, the NPS can be created on the base of «UEK» OJSC – structure, which serves Russian universal electronic cards, it is possible to solve this task within three months.

Will hope, that in the near future our internal settlements will be protected from external effects by own NPS, which also can enter a world market in the long term, as it was done by Chinese UnionPay.