01 October 2008, 18:54 Business

Walking distance versus safety

The Duma adopted in the first reading a law that should streamline the work of terminals for accepting payments

Ekaterina Mereminskaya The law on street payment terminals was adopted in the first reading. His opponents fear that the law will legitimize unscrupulous companies, and the discussion showed that serious changes will be made to the draft.

State Duma deputies adopted in the first reading the bill “On the activities of accepting payments from individuals carried out by payment agents.” It is designed to remove all questions about the functioning of electronic terminals that Russians use to pay for housing and communal services, mobile communications, the Internet and other things.

These questions arose in the fall of 2007, when banks became interested in the growing market - the Central Bank issued an instruction obliging operators to enter into agreements with banks in which accounts of the final recipients of money were opened. Most terminal owners did not have such an agreement, and there was a real threat of stopping the operation of the terminals. It was lifted by an oral agreement between the Ministry of Finance , the Bank of Russia and the Ministry of Internal Affairs , which allowed the terminals to operate on the same basis until a bill was prepared. It was ready by spring, but its consideration was postponed - the authors promised to finalize it taking into account the wishes of the Central Bank, the government and banks.

The new version did not bring clarity, but, on the contrary, caused such a heated discussion that the plenary sessions of the Duma had not seen for a long time. “The Central Bank is in favor of rejection, but the committee, for reasons and interests that are unclear to me, proposes to accept,” , a deputy from the Communist Party Nikolai Kolomeytsev factions, was indignant . There is concern that the law will be taken advantage of by unscrupulous companies. deputy For his speech, United Russia and member of the Financial Market Committee Pavel Medvedev prepared a printout of advertisements published on the Internet from dubious companies offering to create their own “money machine,” that is, a terminal. “Now this is illegal, and in principle it can be banned. But after the adoption of the law, this disgrace will become a paying agent,” he explained. —

With this project we offer unsupervised banking activities.”

Medvedev was not convinced by the fact that the project requires the agent to have a liability insurance contract and also imposes requirements on the cash receipt that is issued to the client. “A cash receipt is like a circus trick to distract attention: they show something bright in another place. The cash register has nothing to do with supervision. The cash register is so stupid that it cannot distinguish cash from non-cash money,” Medvedev said, recalling that the “price” for cash withdrawal, which was 11% under the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank Andrei Kozlov , who was allegedly killed for fighting money laundering, now it has dropped to 6–7%. In this regard, there may be claims from the FATF , a deputy from the A Just Russia faction, supported it against the bill, Oksana Dmitrieva and suggested that the Security Committee check the bill.

“This project in the context of the financial crisis means an additional outflow of funds from the banking system,”

- she added. Of course, deputies cannot but be concerned about the safety of payment agent clients, since the majority of the population uses these terminals in one way or another. “We can cause direct damage, since citizens have no guarantees (that their payment will be delivered to the address - Gazeta.Ru),” Dmitrieva said.

“When pharmacies defended their monopoly on the sale of over-the-counter drugs, we were also intimidated. , chairman of the Financial Market Committee, defended the bill Now look, they are quietly sold in various places,” Vladislav Reznik . “Now banks insist in the same way on the monopoly right to accept payments.”

“I hope that none of you buy medicines at kiosks, either for yourself or for your loved ones - it is known how many counterfeits there are,” Medvedev retorted.

Defenders of the bill insisted that if problems with the use of terminals have not arisen so far, then they will not appear. Medvedev convinced that if deputies do not know about problems, this does not mean that they do not exist. "City of Murmansk. All. Payments for utilities have not been received,” he gave an example. “The same thing happened in Cherepovets.”

The deputies left the final say to representatives of the executive branch. And if the government and the Central Bank supported the bill, as , a representative of the Russian government in the State Duma Andrei Loginov , said, then everything is not so clear with the president’s position.

“It is proposed to support the bill in the first reading and not rush to bring it to the second reading,”

- said presidential spokesman Alexander Kosopkin .

First Vice-President of the Association of Regional Banks “Russia”, explained to Gazeta.Ru the approval of the document in the first reading “The lobby on the part of the paying agents had an effect,” Alexander Khandruev, . The banks were unable to put pressure on them. “Although this is a significant loss for banks as a whole, it is a very small amount for each individual bank. In addition, there is a very large bias here towards Sberbank . But the hippopotamus does not suffer from mosquitoes,” he comments.

From a consumer point of view, it is difficult to say which option will be better, since the client's interests are themselves contradictory. On the one hand, you need walking distance, no queues and competition. This can be ensured by passing a law. On the other hand, there is security, which banks are more likely to provide.