Mastercard went to ease the conditions in order to compete with the Fast Payment System, a transfer platform by phone number launched by the Central Bank, RBC sources say in the market. Mastercard wants to make its own platform more attractive to banks and motivate them to connect customer cards to transfers using a simple identifier, explains one of RBC’s interlocutors. “Cardholders can register themselves in the system, but Mastercard expects banks to include this clause in the agreement when issuing new cards and automatically connect all customers to the Mastercard Transfer Hub,” said one of the interlocutors. According to him, the platform was launched back in 2016, but is not yet popular. Also, according to Senior Vice President, Innovation Director of Post Bank Anastasia Maslennikova, by reducing tariffs, Mastercard is counting on a symmetrical reduction in commissions for customers for card-to-card transfers by banks.
“The service of the Mastercard Transfer Hub platform, from the point of view of the sender client, is similar to the transfer service of the Fast Payments System: the recipient’s identifiers are a phone number, an email address or an account on a social network (in particular, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. — RBC)”, — explains the representative of the bank “Zenith”. According to one of the sources, Mastercard Transfer Hub stores all the mobile numbers of customers linked to a card account. Funds can be transferred to Mastercard, Maestro or Visa cards.
Read on RBC Pro
You can receive money on the cards of any banks, both registered in the system and not registered. If the client card is registered, then the transfer will come to it. If not, the recipient will receive a link in a message to a phone number, email or social network account. When clicking on the link, you must enter the received code, and then indicate the card number and accept the transfer. The platform interface can be built into social networks or mobile applications of banks.
Tariff level
The amount of commission that banks pay to payment systems for transfers depends on many factors: the volume of transfers, the type of cards, the terms of the agreement with banks, etc., explains one of RBC’s sources. As indicated in the official Mastercard documents, for the services of transferring information about card transactions to banks (this is only part of the transfer fee), the payment system charges €0.003 from issuing banks for an operation up to 200 rubles, €0.0115 for a transaction in the amount of from 200 to 4 thousand rubles, € 0.02 – for an operation over 4 thousand rubles. Acquiring banks pay €0.01 for transactions up to €20 and 0.05% of the transaction for payments over €20.
For transfers through the SBP for credit institutions, a commission is set to the Central Bank as the operator of the system. Tariffs are from 5 kopecks. up to 3 rubles per transaction depending on the transfer amount. Until June 30, 2022, the Bank of Russia does not charge this fee. The decision to cancel or extend the benefits has not yet been made, says one of RBC’s sources.
Also, according to the decision of the Central Bank, banks cannot charge a commission from customers for transfers in the total amount of up to 100 thousand rubles. per month via SBP. If this limit is exceeded, the commission is 0.5% of the transaction amount, but not more than 1.5 thousand rubles. for the translation.
In November last year, Kommersant informedthat Visa has notified banks of plans to cancel commissions for transfers from card to card by phone number from April 1, 2022.
How SBP affects competition
In their 2021 reports, Mastercard and Visa reported on the risks of their work in local markets due to the emergence of new players. This can reduce the income of international payment systems and even squeeze them out of the country. Visa explicitly stated that we are talking about Russia, where the SBP appeared in 2018, and in 2015, the Mir national cards.
Payment systems are creating new transfer scenarios in an effort to compete with the Fast Payment System, says Alexei Khranilov, head of the Transfers department at VTB. “The main focus now is on the ability to conduct transactions by phone number – today it is already obvious to everyone that this option turned out to be more convenient and in demand among users. The second vector is stimulating tariff conditions to make the operation more profitable for the client,” he argues. The share of SBP in transfers between individuals at VTB already exceeds 60%.
The Russians estimated the scale of the spread of “wage slavery”
The SBP is indeed becoming a serious infrastructure project that is changing the business models of classical non-cash payments, says Egor Krivosheya, Head of Research at the Skolkovo NES Center. In his opinion, the pricing and attractiveness of the offer is influenced not only by the competitive environment, but also by the range of services offered. Therefore, if MasterHub has additional functionality, then it can be attractive even if there are commissions. “Moreover, from the point of view of a long-term strategy, according to the plans, FPS tariffs will not be zero from mid-2022. This also allows the Ministry of Railways to compete even with the presence of commissions, ”Krivosheya believes.
The new commission model from Mastercard will be beneficial for those banks that have a large flow of outgoing payments, that is, for large state-owned banks with payroll projects, says one of RBC’s interlocutors in the payment market. For the same banks that have a large volume of incoming transfers, the proposed changes to Mastercard will not save much, he emphasizes.
In 2021, in some large Russian banks, transfers through the SBP have already overtaken transfers through other channels. The Central Bank expects that in 2023 the share of transfers in the FPS in the structure of all interbank transfers will be 25% (by number). As of March, it was at the level of 15%; the Bank of Russia did not publish later data. As of February 1, 2022, 211 banks were connected to the SBP. Their clients have made more than 1.1 billion transactions through the system in the amount of more than 6.5 trillion rubles.