Eastern European Payment Gateways
Web Commerce Today, Issue 48, July 15, 2001
Credit cards are not as widespread in Russia as some other countries. About 80 to 85% of the e-commerce is done on a COD (Cash On Delivery) basis. The remainder is split between prepaid "wallets" as described below, and credit cards.
| PayCash.ru Russian Federation Eastern Europe |
Alkor Group of CompaniesSt. Petersburg Russian Federation A prepaid wallet system used in Russia, a mutual project of Tavrichesky Bank and the Alkor Group of Companies (St. Petersburg, Russia). Members can transfer money from their PayCash account to a local bank account of cooperating banks. At present only Russian version of the Ecombank exists. It operates digital Rubles, which can be used for payments in more than a hundred Internet shops in Russia. There are currently seven Russian banks connected with PayCash -- the biggest is Guta (among the top 10 in size). PayCash is also connected to Sberbank, Contact, and Western Union money transfer systems. "In fact," says the director, "we can tranfer money to any bank in Russia, but the commission for non-connected banks is higher." To succeed, such a system must be adopted by both consumers (who install a wallet on their PC) and merchants (who take payments via PayCash). Without a critical mass of both consumers and merchants, a wallet system can't succeed. In the US, PayPal has some similarities in concept to PayCash, though the PayPal system can take payment via credit cards. The system appears to be catching on in Russia, that has grown from 15 to 36 e-shop merchants in the year ending March 2001, with 59 show-cases and 8 representative offices in Russia and abroad. Dr. Victor Dostov is project manager. About 3 to 10% of Internet transactions in Russia are through digital money, and about the same through credit cards. The remainder, 80 to 85%, are C.O.D. PayCash in the US is represented by Cyphermint, Inc. http://www.cyphermint.com. The current bottleneck is getting money into the system. |
| Webmoney.ru Russian Federation Eastern Europe |
WebMoney TransferRussian Federation A prepaid wallet system used in Russia, where credit cards are less common. Not to be confused with WebMoney Corp. of Japan. Site is entirely in Russian. |
User Feedback:As I live in Russia so I sending you two Russian payment systems. Both of them are systems of Internet (electronical) money and well known in Russia. I use "Webmoney.ru". It is very very comfortable for people who is spend a lot of time on the computer. I think that it is simply enough in installation, study and use also provides a sufficient level of safety. I can not estimate as far as these systems correspond to the laws, but both firms assert, that they have all necessary sanctions for activity. 1. http://www.webmoney.ru/. (I could not understand if webmoney.COM, and webmoney.RU are the same system but from webmoney.ru all information in English has disappeared :-((. 2. www.PayCash.ru/ It has all information in English. -- Kisin Mikhail Servocomp Ltd. RU | |
