PRESS: Russian government to ban anonymous cash-ins of e-wallets

MOSCOW, Jul 29 (PRIME) -- The Russian government plans to ban anonymous cash-ins of e-wallets, people will only be able to do it after identification through a banking account, Anatoly Aksakov, head of the financial market committee of the parliament’s lower house State Duma, said in an interview to RBC business newswire published on Monday.

On July 26, the parliament’s upper house Federation Council approved amendments to the regulations for payment providers and foreign payment systems and the central bank now will be able to demand that foreign operators provide personal data of its users in Russia. Owners of anonymous e-wallets of Yandex.Money, QIWI Wallet, WebMoney, PayPal, VK Pay, and others will not be able to conduct payments after the amendments come in force.

“These amendments were introduced on request of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service as these wallets may be used to finance drug trafficking, terrorism, and so on. Now users of anonymous e-wallets will be able to replenish them only through a banking account to make source of the money clear,” Aksakov said.

In March, President Vladimir Putin signed a law that allows for cash withdrawal from pre-paid anonymous cards only if a client passed a simplified identification procedure and if the sum of the withdrawal does not exceed 5,000 rubles per day and 40,000 rubles per month.

(63.1271 rubles – U.S. $1)

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