MOSCOW, January 15. /ITAR-TASS/. Over half of e-wallets and prepaid cards are “non-personified”, thus users of these systems will face difficulties when trying to conduct financial transactions if new antiterrorist amendments to legislation will be adopted, according to Viktor Dostov, chairman of the Electronic Money Association.
He said that over half of transactions in terms of quantity are conducted through non-personified e-wallets and prepaid cards. “The total volume of payments through all e-wallets and prepaid cards is over 300 billion rubles per year,” he added. Dostov specified that the majority of e-wallet users provide their identities to the operator not through a personal visit, but indirectly, such as through mobile phone verification or other remote methods. Thus, according to the Federal law On National Payment System, the wallets are ‘non-personified’.
The overwhelming majority of users of anonymous e-wallets are people who do not conduct large-volume transactions, the expert believes. They use these financial tools to pay for online shopping, utility bills, traffic tickets and other services.
If the decision to impose harsher demands to payment systems is made, developing convenient methods of identifying e-wallets, opposed to coming to a bank with a passport, will become a necessity, Dostov stressed, adding that it’s unlikely that users will go to banks en masse to identify their accounts. If the proposed measures are taken, “a number of services which can be paid for online will disappear, and some will be paid for in cash,” the expert suggested. Dostov added that the proposed limit of 1000 rubles per day is unrealistic, saying that some countries limit the volume of one transaction to, say, one thousand Euro. Other proposed amendments include imposing a ceiling of 5000 rubles to anonymous accounts and bans on international payments.