VKontakte launched its own payment system

The VKontakte social network on Wednesday, June 27, launches its own payment system VK Pay - it will allow users to pay for various services and goods through their social network account, RBC writes with reference to a company representative. The service or product itself can also be selected without leaving the social network: in parallel with VK Pay, VKontakte will begin to develop its own marketplace and has already named several well-known partners.

Details

• Initially, VK Pay will be available only to community administrators. It is expected that the system will be used by small and medium-sized businesses, for which social networks are the main channel for promoting their products. VK Pay does not yet have a transaction fee - it may appear in the future, but now the priority is to attract an audience, the representative of VKontakte explained.
• As a source close to Mail.Ru Group told RBC, while the social network will earn at the expense of large players: “individual conditions” will be created for them on the platform, such as additional commissions or other advertising methods of monetization. The limit on withdrawal of funds from the system for users is 200 thousand rubles per month, the maximum amount of one transaction is 60 thousand rubles.
• In parallel with the launch of VK Pay, its own VKontakte marketplace will be launched, which its partners will be able to use. Among them are the OneTwoTrip air and railway ticket service, services for tickets to entertainment events Kassir.ru and ShowGoGo, as well as Delivery Club and Grow Food food delivery services.
• Thus, VKontakte creates a single ecosystem so that the user can make purchases without leaving his account, says RBC's interlocutor. According to Alexander Gorny, director of strategy and analysis at Mail.Ru Group, in a few years, the turnover of funds through the VKontakte communities could reach 100 billion rubles a year.

Context

• about VK Pay in early March For the first time, RNS wrote , citing a company presentation for partners. Money transfers between social network users have existed since September 2016, the monthly audience of VKontakte is 97 million people.
• The money transfer system and messenger functions within one application are united by several large companies at once - for example, WhatsApp is testing P2P money transfers in India, the mobile version of Sberbank has a “dialogs” tab (in fact, an analogue of the messenger), and Telegram creates a separate payment infrastructure for competition with Visa and Mastercard, for which it conducts ICO.

Artem Gubenko