Popular payment service repeated the fate of Qiwi

The popular Russian payment service YuMoney (formerly Yandex.Money ) repeated the fate of its competitor, Qiwi , and came under significant restrictions from the Central Bank . The client of the service told about this in the blog of the VC edition. The author of the message cited the text of the letter sent out on behalf of "YuMoney" to clients. It says the restrictions were the result of an audit conducted by the regulator last year. As a result, the Central Bank banned YuMoney for six months to conduct transactions between the accounts of clients and non-resident companies. A similar ban at the end of December 2020 affected Qiwi, but then it was not about all non-resident companies, but only about most of them those that aroused the Central Bank's suspicion. Qiwi was also ordered to pay a fine of 11 million rubles. Specific reasons in both cases are not named, however, market participants attribute this to the struggle of the Central Bank with illegal online casinos in Russia and betting companies. According to a common scheme, they withdraw their proceeds abroad using Russian banks, with which they conclude acquiring agreements, and prepaid corporate cards, through which funds are transferred in transit to electronic wallets and are withdrawn abroad through cryptocurrencies. Companies thus do not pay taxes in Russia. In "YuMoney" "Lente.ru" was told that they are going to take into account all the requirements of the Central Bank, presented as a result of the audit. It is also argued that the changes will affect a small number of client companies and all of them will be informed individually. In general, wallets still work in Russia and are available for transactions. Since 2012, the main shareholder of Yandex.Money has been Sberbank with a 75 percent share. Last year, after the division of the joint business with Yandex, the credit organization, which changed its name to Sberbank, became the sole owner of the service, renaming it YuMoney.