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Yandex.Money payment system stops receiving funds for political purposes

MOSCOW, January 23. /TASS/. Russia’s Yandex.Money payment system will shortly amend terms of the user agreement and introduce a restriction on fundraising for political purposes, press service of the company told TASS on Monday.

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"The law demands from us to limit use of e-wallets for purposes and by ways that may have varying interpretation from standpoint of the law; otherwise the company is exposed to compliance risks. Taking care of millions of users, we are to mitigate these risks. Therefore we made a decision to change terms of the user agreement and introduce a paragraph limiting fundraising for political purposes to an e-wallet," head of Yandex.Money press service Evgeniya Artautova said.

Restriction on remittances for political purpose is a standard for online payments market, representative of Yandex.Money said. The majority of e-wallet services in Russia (for example, Qiwi and PayPal) have such restrictions, she added.

Yandex.Money plans to post the amendment shortly and the requirement will come into force from promulgation. "At the same time, a fund - legal entity may still use Yandex.Kassa system to collect donations from individuals in any amounts," the company said.

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