The Boston Consulting Group recently released the "Global Payment Service Market in 2021: Expected Growth" research report, claiming that the growth rate of card payments in Russia in the next 10 years will surpass that of the world, and the average annual growth rate of transaction volume and payment amount will be 12% and 9%, respectively. Hauser, the head of the digital technology experimental practice business of the Boston Consulting Group in Russia and the CIS, believes that Russia will surpass the world's largest economies in these indicators.

Research content

Insiders in the Russian payment market agree with the view that the market has great potential for growth. According to Visa data, Russia's bank card transfer volume has ranked first in the world, tokenized mobile payments are in a leading position, and the growth of contactless payments has exceeded that of many countries. At present, 53% of Russians use contactless payment for shopping, 74% of consumers hope that all stores can be equipped with contactless payment terminals, and 30% of Russians will give up shopping where contactless payment is not available. However, industry insiders also talked about some limiting factors. Mikhailova, executive director of the Russian National Payment Association, believes that the market is close to saturation and will enter a platform period afterwards. A certain percentage of residents are unwilling to use non-cash payment methods. She believes that the development of non-cash payments is largely related to the government's efforts to develop a legal economy.

In addition, the underdeveloped credit card market may hinder the achievement of the indicators proposed in the Boston Consulting Group report, and the use of debit card payments directly depends on domestic economic conditions. Industry insiders pointed out that the current growth of non-cash payments is mainly achieved through market efforts, and further development and investment incentives are needed. However, the efforts of regulators are likely to be aimed at increasing government participation in the industry, which may hinder private investment and thus inhibit overall development.

Main result

Markov, an associate professor in the Department of Financial Markets at Plekhanov University of Economics in Russia, said: “The new crown pneumonia epidemic sweeping the world in 2020 has pushed many commercial entities to actively transition to non-cash payments, especially bank card payments. Russia has also actively participated in this. Progress, both the payment volume and the payment amount have shown a relatively high growth rate.” He said, according to a research report compiled by the Boston Consulting Group, the growth rate of Russian credit card payments in the next 10 years will surpass that of the world. Markov said: “On the one hand, considering the investment in infrastructure of Russian credit card payment institutions, the forecast is completely reasonable.” On the other hand, he believes that in the medium term, due to wider and large-scale introduction and use of payment services, Russian credit card payments will increase. The rate may drop slightly.

Kolenev of Finam Financial Group said that the Boston Consulting Group has adopted a linear approximation of the trends observed in recent years and extended it to the foreseeable future. In this way, Russia is indeed promising. After all, not long ago, Russia was more than 40 times behind the leader in this field, Norway, but now it's only one and a half times and a half. If Russia’s information infrastructure occupies and distributes similarly to Norway or some other European country, then all this is true. However, the rapid growth of non-cash payments into the lives of Russians is largely due to the "low base effect", and Russia started late. Secondly, Kolenev believes that most parts of Russia have serious problems in ensuring uninterrupted communications. A large number of rural settlements lack stable links with the "mainland" and banking institutions. He said: "As long as we have enough technical support to fill this gap in the market, we will continue to maintain rapid growth. However, in the next few years, we will not be able to densely arrange mobile signal towers on the vast land of the country. Even if it is large Non-cash payments in cities cannot reach the 100% level.” Kolenev said that a large part of the Russian labor market and the entire service sector are in a “gray area” where only cash settlements are used. All kinds of “small workshop services” and other The form of private services bypasses tax agencies and does not use credit card machines for payment. This situation has also caused these industries to still use cash payment methods. (Source: World Wide Web)