E-commerce still only represents 3-4% of the total Russian retail market (4% if including crossborder online sales). Russian cross-border online sales of goods and services (including digital goods, content, games and social network services) exceeded US$ 12.5 billion.
While sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, American Express, PayPal, Discover network, ApplePay, Visa and Mastercard have all suspended operations in Russia since March 2022.
The National Payment Card System — or NSPK, as it is known in Russian — oversees card transactions in Russia, even if those cards carry Visa or Mastercard logos. The NSPK dates back to 2014 when Russia was sanctioned for its earlier invasion of Crimea. At the time, Visa and Mastercard accounted for almost all of Russia’s card network activity, leaving hundreds of thousands of people with useless cards.
The Russian government saw they had a vulnerability, leading President Vladimir Putin to sign a law in 2015 that created NSPK and essentially forced Mastercard and Visa to turn over processing of the transitions to the new system.
That year, NSPK launched Mir, its own card network, although most Russians stuck with Visa and Mastercard. In 2017, Moscow passed a law requiring banks handling pension payments and public sector worker salaries to make those funds available through Mir cards, causing usage to jump from 2 million to 95 million between 2016 and 2020.
Cash is still king. Only 20% of Russians and Kazakhs have a credit card. And consumers use cards to pay for only half of all online purchases.
e-wallets operating in the region include Yandex, Qiwi, WebMoney, Skrill and PaySera.
