Mastercard has launched the over-the-phone money transfer to cards of any other bank in Russia.

TASS reports that Raiffeisenbank was the first to join the platform. They note that the transfer can be completed with the phone number, email, as well as accounts on social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.

Customers can make wire transfers from and to Mastercard/Maestro and Visa cards, issued by Russian banks.

Mail.ru Group performs as the tech partner of Mastercard. The IT company has developed a payment system platform on the basis of Russian software: the database management system Tarantool and Mail.Ru Cloud Solutions.

According to Mail.ru Group, the platform enables users “to have a secure two-way exchange of information about bank cards and user identifiers in the form of mobile phone number, email, or social media account”.

Money transfer from debit cards of other banks with a phone number is free, while transfers from Raiffeisenbank credit cards will have a commission fee.


Banks.am reported earlier that international payment systems Visa and Mastercard were getting ready to launch a card-to-card transfer service in Russia, which would require the user to simply submit the recipient’s phone number.

In particular, it was announced that each system would develop its own service, but the essence of the service would be the same for both: the card issuer sends the client’s phone number and the relevant card number to a special reserve.

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