Development of National Payment Card System

Currently the third stage of establishment and development of the National Payment Card System (NSPK) is taking place in Russia. It is planned that in 2016-2017 more and more banks will join the payment card issue. As a result NPSK will gain traction and become nationwide.

The previous stage covered the issue of the Russian payment card «Mir». The NSPK was entitled to registration of this trade mark. By the end of 2015 the first banks were to issue the cards and start conducting transactions. At the moment 59 members participate in the payment system «Mir». 

The Central Bank of Russia allowed the banks time till the end of the first half of 2016 for preparation to issue the bank card «Mir» and for opening the cards acceptance network. Nowadays about 200 000 payment cards were produced for all the country and still nobody has ordered great volumes of them. The only bank that has made a big order is the Russian National Commercial Bank (RNCB) operating in the Crimea and being under sanctions. In April the bank was to be given 300 000 «Mir» cards.

The Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) has already fined the sellers which don’t accept the «Mir» card. The detailed information on these cases is presented in section «Supreme Arbitration Court data» in the Information and Analytical System Globas-i. The companies in Arkhangelsk, Karachai-Cherkess Republic, Kemerovo, Nizhny Tagil were subjected to fine. In the whole only 4 cases have been found, the examination procedure of which was commenced in 2015.

The National financial market council (NSFR) has made a request to Mega-regulator to extend the deadline to October 1st, 2016, when the banks are to be ready to provide the acceptance of «Mir» cards and to supply them to state employees. However, according to the Central Bank the allocated time was enough. 

Under current conditions, a number of banks finally found the way to comply with the requirements at a stated time till July 1st, 2016. In particular, they decided to attach two cards to accounts of Russians - «Mir» and one of the leading international payment systems card (Visa or MasterCard). The plans of attaching «Mir» to Visa and MasterCard were stated by VTB 24, MDM Bank, Promsvyazbank, Avangard, Soyuz, Levoberezhny, SDM-Bank, Asian-Pacific Bank, SKB-Bank, Genbank, Rosgosstrakh Bank, Chelyabinvestbank.

Among other events related to development of NSPK, in the 1st quarter of 2016 the following ones are stated:

• four banks joined the rules of the National Payment System: Ak Bars, Surgutneftegazbank, partners of Uralsib bank (Garant-Invest and Pervomaisky);
• MegaFon became the first mobile operator who started cooperation with the Russian payment system «Mir»;
• The NSPK entrusted the protection of its «Mir» cards to international payment system Visa due to failure to get license to use 3D-Secure technology;
• The Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB) plans to convert the NSPK and banks to the Russian cryptography;
• The NSPK considers a possibility to introduce the «Mir» card to payment services of ApplePay и SamsungPay systems;
• In 2016 the systems JCB, ChinaUnionPay and AmericanExpress are to switch to the NSPK.

As a part of the NSPK development the work on promotion of the Russian payment system abroad should start in 2016-2017. As a commencement of the work the co-badging programs will be implemented jointly with international systems. According to the co-badging programs the cards will be accepted in Russia as the cards of the Russian payment systems and when going abroad they will be accepted through for example MasterCard payment system network due to the second so-called international application provided in the chip.  

Reference information

The net profit of the NSPK for 2015 amounted to 1,2 billion RUB. The biggest income was brought by maintenance of Visa and MasterCard which gave it its traffic in the sum of 2,8 billion RUB. A year earlier the NSPK had a loss of 90 million RUB. In the following accounting periods the growth of the NSPK annual income from maintenance of payment systems is expected.