Page 34 - RBI FIntech Atlas 2018

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Spotlight Russia
The Russian ntech market has been growing signi cantly for the past two years in terms of both the number of deals and the volume of investment. The market has several particularities: Russia is a leading global supplier of IT specialists and some areas such as P2P lending, crowd investment and cryptocurrencies have yet to be regulated.
According to some ntechs the key hurdles facing the Russian market include the low interest of external investors, the low spending power of the public, geopolitical risk and the in exibility of the tax authorities. In 2018 the Russian Central Bank created a regulatory sandbox in order to encourage new nancial services and technologies such as a system of fast payments, a uni ed system of biometric identi cation and a nancial supermarket. Accelerators such as FRII accelerator and HSE incubator regularly support the development of ntech startups.
St.Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow’s Red Square, Russia
Fintech partnership programs designed to help early- stage startups to meet market needs were set up in 2018 by Sberbank, Raiffeisenbank, Tinkoff and Alfa Bank. Several banks also acquired startups in the eld of loyalty and payments, including Alfa Bank (Cardsmobile) and Tinkoff (Cloudpayments). The UK ntech unicorn Revolut also entered Russia in 2018 via a licensing deal with Qiwi Bank.
Russia’s Central Bank has launched a Fintech Association and a sandbox designed to support further development. The FinoPolis ntech forum also strengthens the ntech ecosystem. Cryptocurrencies and tokens are legal but discouraged as a means of payment while ICOs and crowdfunding have gained popularity as alternative sources of capital. Accelerators and incubators such as Russia Fintech Lab, Huobi, Digital Horizon and Digital October are active in Russia as are 70+ VC rms, who invested a total of over €212M in 2017.