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bne Tech
May 31, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 22
Tinkoff Bank positions itself on Russia’s $15bn online travel market Adrien Henni for EWDN in Moscow
Russia’s only purely online bank, Tinkoff Bank, has launched an own-branded online travel agency. The offer includes air and railway tickets, packaged tours, hotels and car rentals, reports East-West Digital News (EWDN).
Since April 2018, the bank has put around $2mn into developing this travel service platform, the press service told us. However, the platform worked so far “as a white-label technology” to commercialize air tickets. From now on these services will be made available to all under the brand ‘Tinkoff Travel.’
Tinkoff Travel has partnered with several global distribution systems (GDSs) to bypass middlemen and sell air tickets directly to customers. Major aggregators such as Aviasales.ru now feature the offers. “More will follow,” says the bank.
Answering a question on Tinkoff Travel’s competi- tive advantages, the bank’s press service told us: “Tinkoff Travel is unique because, in addition to attractive prices, it offers an up to 5% cashback for all purchases within the Tinkoff ecosystem, and up to 10% on hotel bookings and car rentals.”
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Russian online retailer Ulmart will open to Chinese producers
Russian online retailer Ulmart will start testing sales of Chinese products, the company said
on May 27. The platform will not be mediating
the sales to end consumers, but will provide the "shopping window" for Chinese producers, as well as its orders processing engine.
Currently Ulmart is focusing on household appliances and electronics and has already opened a new sub-segment "Smartphones from China". The share of Chinese products is planned to be lowered to 5% of total turnover, while their price would be 15% lower on average.
The delivery of Chinese goods would initially take two to three weeks, but will be cut to five to seven working days. In some regions the delivery would be paid.
In March Russian Post (Pochta Rossii) said it plans to expand the frequency and coverage of cargo flights to China, potentially increasing the turnover by 15-20%. Previous reports suggested that Russia's largest traditional retailer X5 Group is in direct talks with China Post on developing alternative delivery routes for goods from China.
As reported by bne IntelliNews, Chinese e-commerce major Alibaba and its international AliExpress and the Chinese domestic electronic payment Tmall platforms are forming a strategic partnership with Mail.ru, its shareholder mobile operator MegaFon, and the sovereign Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). Alibaba was also reportedly in talks with VTB Bank, which is affiliated with Russian Post.
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