Creation of Russia nationwide payment system to take 2-6 months — Sberbank chief

March 31, 13:33 UTC+4
"We have created our Russian chip, it is certified, an identification application and all standards that are compatible with international payment systems are provided," Chairman of Russian public savings bank Sberbank German Gref adds

Vladimir Putin meets German Gref

ITAR-TASS/Alexei Druzhinin

MOSCOW, March 31. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia will need from 2 to 6 months to launch a nationwide payment system.

“From the moment amendments are introduced in the law, I believe that we will need from 2 to 6 months of technical work to launch a nationwide payment system in different variants,” Chairman of Russian public savings bank Sberbank German Gref told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday.

Putin recalled that Gref “has initiated creation of a nationwide payment system in bank cards” a few years ago. “How is this work going on?” the president asked. Last week at a meeting with members of the Federation Council upper house of parliament the president has set the task to create a nationwide payment system in Russia, “Why don’t we do this? This should be done compulsorily and we will do this.” Putin has made this statement several days after the United States had imposed sanctions against Russian business people Visa and Mastercard had restricted access to their services to four Russian banks.

Creation of a nationwide payment system was discussed at a meeting in the Central Bank of Russia, Gref said. “Some changes are needed in several Russian legislative acts which can be amended quite quickly,” he said. The Sberbank chief noted that local Russian processing would be created to provide the whole scope of services for settlement, clearing and processing of all bank card payments.

In reply to Putin’s question “in which condition the law is now” the Sberbank chairman responded that the document had been submitted for debates in the State Duma. “I hope that now it may be enacted quite quickly in view of recent events and there are different ways to settle this problem,” he noted.

“We are prepared as much as possible, we have created a processing centre, we have created our Russian chip which company Sitronics produces, it is certified, an identification application and all standards that are compatible with international payment systems are provided, “ the Sberbank chief said.

http://en.itar-tass.com/economy/725921