The Bank of Russia is no longer ready to postpone the deadlines for connecting banks to SBPey (a mobile application for paying for goods and services in retail stores and the Internet), on July 1, all credit institutions must provide customers with the opportunity to use the service, Olga Skorobogatova, First Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank, said during the conference “Regulation by the Bank Russian activities of commercial banks”, organized by the Association of Banks of Russia.
“In terms of timing, we had this date – April 1 this year. At your numerous requests, we have shifted it to July 1, it will not be moved further than July 1. We expect that all banks on July 1 will implement the opportunity for customers to use only a mobile application of banks, but also SBPey,” Skorobogatova said.
In April, the regulator pushed back the deadlines for the mandatory connection of banks to the SBPey mobile application by 3 months (until July 1). Prior to this, it was assumed that credit institutions would provide customers with access to SBPey before April 1.
The fast payment system (FPS) of the Central Bank was launched in pilot mode on January 28, 2019, in full scale on February 28 of the same year. The system allows you to transfer funds between accounts in different banks by phone number (C2C transactions), pay for goods and services (C2B transactions) and receive refunds in case of refusal to purchase or payment from companies to the client in the form of a transfer to a brokerage account, insurance payment etc. (B2C operations). In the future, it is planned to add to the SBP the possibility for citizens to make transfers in favor of the state (C2G transactions), pay for utility services and other options. According to the Central Bank for the first quarter of 2022, every third Russian uses the SBP. Since the launch of the system, more than 50 million people have used it, they have completed 1.4 billion transactions.