Almost half of Russians now use electronic payment methods

Electronic payment methods are used mainly for online purchases (38% of surveyed users), mobile services (36%), money transfers (29%) as well as digital content, online games and event tickets (from 14 to 18%), according to two studies on the Russian e-payment industry issued by the Russian internet company Yandex and its payments subsidiary Yandex.Money, EWDN reports.

Even though cash on delivery still dominates where physical goods are concerned, Russians are now fully aware of the main available electronic payment methods, according to Yandex.Money, which teams up every spring with TNS to conduct its research. Approximately three quarters of surveyed Russians actually use electronic payment methods at least once per year. No less than 45% use them on a monthy basis.

While cash-in kiosks (also known as offline payment terminals) are used by 83% of surveyed Russians, bank cards, online banking and e-wallets are now familiar to 80%, 76% and 73% of Russians. The Yandex.Money-TNS survey involved Russians between the ages of 20 and 44 who live in cities with populations over 700,000.

In a separate research, Yandex studied the use of payment methods by Russian sites with a payment function and the research was carried out this spring among 86,000 websites. The selection was formed using a machine learning approach based on Yandex’s data.

The study indicates that almost all Russian internet stores accept payments with bank cards. It also shows the popularity of Robokassa and Yandex.Money’s ‘Yandex Payment Solution’ as payment aggregators. These two solutions, which allow online stores to integrate easily a variety of payment methods, are used by 21% and 19% of online stores, respectively.

Interkassa has a 5% market share while that of other aggregators (Wallet One, Oplata, PayOnline, PayAnyWay, RBK Money) does not exceed 3%. Both studies suggest that Yandex.Money is the most popular electronic currencies among users as well as among websites. It is used by 44% of the users surveyed by TNS (WebMoney: 43%, VisaQiwi Wallet: 36%, PayPal: 35%); and it is available on 47% of the websites analysed by Yandex (WebMoney: 44%, Visa Qiwi Wallet: 39%, PayPal: 8%).

PayPal’s performance might look modest by international standards, but it is honorable taking into account the fact that this payment method was made fully available to Russian sites and users only in September 2013.