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the Russian market), portfolio building tools, purchasing options and personal manager services, accessible directly via the mobile app (September 2018);
• Candlestick charts showing price changes for securities over fixed time intervals to help with market analysis (November 2018);
• Individual investment accounts, enabling securities transactions and providing tax benefits (November 2018);
• Tinkoff Collections, allowing Tinkoff Investments account holders to buy into thematic investment portfolios in
just one click (December 2018). This service features 26 investment themes, including Technologies of the Future, Anti-Sanctions and A Journey to Mars. More thematic securities collections are coming soon.
With no branches, Tinkoff serves all its customers remotely via
bne:FinTech
online channels and a cloud-based call centre staffed by over 10,000 employees, which makes it one of the largest in Europe. A proprietary network of 2,500 representatives across the country enables the bank to provide next-day product delivery.
The Tinkoff.ru ecosystem developed by the bank offers financial and lifestyle services. On top of traditional banking products, it includes investments, travel, SME services, mortgage, insurance, a mobile operator, entertainment
and education.
The bank was founded in 2006 by a Russian entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov. Its parent company – TCS Group Holding PLC – has been listed on the LSE since 2013. The 9M18 IFRS net income of TCS Group Holding PLC amounted to RUB19bn ($290mn), while ROE grew to 72.9%.
Tinkoff Bank is the second largest player in the Russian credit card market, with a market share of 11.4%.
The Central Bank of Russia to expand its new peer-to-peer Rapid Payment System (RPS) to B2C payments
Ben Aris in Berlin
The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) has just introduced
a Rapid Payment System (RPS) that allows Russians
to send money to each other using only a telephone number, but already wants to expand the system, Interfax and Finanz.ru reports, citing the CBR’s First Deputy Chairperson and Head of the Fintech Association Olga Skorobogatova.
The move may be the start of a CBR move to reduce the state- owned retail incumbent Sberbank domination of Russia’s banking business and to promote a more balanced sector by introducing more competition.
The plan is designed to be a key competitive pressure to lower the interchange/acquiring costs for merchants, as an alternative to direct capping or regulation of an interchange fees. The CBR has also asked the commercial banks participating in the system to offer the service for free.
The CBR launched a test version of the RPS on 28 January, with 12 banks participating. Peer-to-peer (P2P) payments within the system are to be launched to the public from 28
February. In 2H19, the CBR plans to expand services to payments to business-to-consumer (B2C). These transactions would include a QR code-based solution similar to AliPay
in China.
“Interchange fees are likely to start coming under pressure from the CBR, which is evolving as a key competitor to Sberbank (controller of over two thirds of the segment). The extension of the P2P system functionality is logical and would basically see the CBR, through its 100%-owned subsidiary NSPK, which also runs the MIR card payment system and processes all domestic card transactions, launch an ‘AliPay of Russia’. Structurally for the market, we believe it means the evolution from a ‘Brazil model’, with an average acquiring fee of some 1.8%, to a US one, with fees of 0.8% – although not the tightly regulated European model, where fees are capped at 0.2/0.3% (Poland being a recent example). For Sberbank,
it would mean a slowdown in F&C growth, to 7% YoY in
2020, on our estimates (vs. mid-teens guidance under current strategy). We have already reflected this shift in our forecasts,” Svetlana Aslanova of VTB Capital (VTBC) said in a note.
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