On April 1, restrictions began to apply on the territory of Russia prohibiting the deposit of cash to electronic wallets. This means that users of the services “QIWI-Wallet”, WebMoney, PayPal and other analogs can no longer replenish e-wallets anonymously through terminals and offices of telecom operators. Now, to replenish their account, they need to go through identification and link a bank account to the wallet.

Image: Vladimir Trefilov / RIA Novosti

Recall that the initiative to strengthen control in the field of electronic money came from Rosfinmonitoring. The department believed that this approach will help in identifying the identity of people using such services for illegal activities, including the financing of terrorism. It is worth noting that amendments to the law “On the National Payment System” were adopted in the summer of 2019, but market participants received a 12-month deferral to adapt business processes to new requirements.

In 2020, the amendments also did not enter into force due to a request from the association of banks “Russia” to postpone the start date of their effect. Initially, the Bank of Russia did not support the postponement of the deadlines, indicating that enough time was allocated for the implementation of these changes, taking into account the effective date, including taking into account the spread of coronavirus infection. However, in September 2020, the Central Bank still provided a deferral for the introduction of a ban on replenishing anonymous e-wallets with cash, so it began to operate only from April 1, 2021.