Page 11 - RusRPTDec22

end of October. Two Russian banks will test an alternative approach - their own POS-terminals for Mir cards abroad, RBC learned.
The publication does not write what kind of banks they are, but it knows that it is supposed to start from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, where there are especially many Russian tourists. First of all, the terminals will be installed in hotels and large stores.
There are two main schemes of work: agency and intermediary. In the first scheme, an agent of a trading company opens a ruble account for him in a Russian bank, concludes an acquiring agreement on his behalf and connects a terminal in the country of service. Payments via the Internet are received by a Russian bank and then transferred to the company's account in a foreign bank. The main advantage is that the transaction itself does not go through a foreign bank.
In the intermediary version, the money goes to the account of the intermediary in the acquiring bank (not necessarily Russian) and through it is converted from rubles and goes to the seller.
There is also a third option for working with Mir, which Kommersant recently outlined: transferring money to a store employee’s card and then from his account to the store. The scheme is “grey”, but it is already in effect and shows that the service is in demand.
The installation of its own POS terminals abroad is a rare, but working scheme, the head of the group for working with financial institutions at DRT, Maxim Nalyutin, confirmed to RBC. This is how the Chinese Alipay operates with its network in places of concentration of Chinese tourists.
The advantage of the scheme is that by default it does not violate Russian banking regulation (which operates only within the borders of the country), the disadvantage is that it is subject to the regulation of the "host" country. If in Turkey it is quite easy to obtain a payment license, then in the UAE the requirements and supervision of potential intermediaries are noticeably stricter. But in general, everything is possible, Pavel Ickert, managing partner of the law firm Ickert and Partners, told the publication.
2.3 IEA predictions for gas supplies in medium term
IEA project a continued reduction in the EU's reliance on Russian gas. By 2030, imports are 90% lower. In APS, they are 0 before 2030. This is not easy; to avoid destructive demand reductions or price volatility, a huge scale up in clean energy (and LNG imports) needed
11 RUSSIA Country Report December 2022 www.intellinews.com