OREANDA-NEWS On December 7, the State Duma introduced a bill toughening control over the activities of foreign payment systems (MoneyGram, Intel Express) and electronic payment services (AliPay, WeChat and others) in Russia. Among the authors of the amendments to the law on the National payment system (NPS) — Head of the Financial Market Committee Anatoly Aksakov and first Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on budget and financial markets Nikolai Zhuravlev.

According to the document, foreign payment service providers, or e-wallets, will be prohibited from providing money transfer services to Russians, and Russian banks will be prohibited from providing such transfers. Such wallets will be able to work in Russia only with their non-resident clients, according to the bill.

It also obliges foreign payment systems that do not have an operator registered in Russia to open a representative office in the country and coordinate the rules of work with the Central Bank.

"The provision of foreign e-wallets to Russian users is limited in order to stimulate the development of Russian payment instruments and technologies and is aimed at protecting the interests of our citizens and banks," commented in the Central Bank. Russian wallets will continue their development, added there: in particular, it is expected to allow the transfer of funds between the wallets of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs.

The bill introduces a new concept in the legislation - "foreign payment service providers". It is a foreign organization that has the right to provide money transfer services in accordance with the legislation of the state in the territory of which it is registered. Under this definition, in particular, fall Chinese e-wallets WeChat and AliPay.

Currently, in Russia, only PayPal has its own non-Bank credit institution from foreign e-wallets, which owns a license for banking operations with funds in rubles and currency. The rest to provide their services enter into contracts with credit institutions as a foreign company.