All the truth about Russian e-commerce

[img_assist|nid=8243|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=92] This month the Central Bank of Russia released a report stating that out of the total 2007 cashless payments made by individuals in Russia 19.4% (657 roubles) were made using plastic cards, while 9.4% were made through the Internet. That is a good indicator of a financial Internet activity for a developing country.

Eight days after requesting a comment from the Central Bank, on June 11 it told 'Kommersant' that “the volume of payments made by credit organizations on the basis of credit instructions made by individuals to a credit organization (or its branch) through the Internet network” equaled 285.2 billion rubles. This is equivalent to 218.2-percent growth since 2006. The published data calculations give a different figure of 318.3-percent growth, which however does not change the impression of such rapid growth.

But the problem is that it is quite difficult to determine what operations caused such a rapid growth. According to the Central Bank it receives data in an “aggregate form”, which signifies that it is impossible to point out the portion  which can be directly attributed to electronic commerce.

The difficulty is that according to the description of an Internet payment in the Central Bank Order No. 1376, which is the basis for the figures published on June 3, payments made through online services, such as Yandex.Dengi or WebMoney, payments made online by credit card and payments made for cellular telephones and Internet service at payment terminals or supermarket cashiers are all defined as Internet payments.

On the other hand, the Kiberplat online payment system states that its 2007 turnover consisted of $4.74 billion, which is an 80-percent increase in a year. The system has 170,000 payment points and according to the Central Bank, there are a total of 240,000 electronic payment terminals existing in Russia. This leads to a conclusion that there is still little real electronic commerce in Russia, but many electronic payment terminals.