Yandex.Money is the largest electronic payments service in Russia, according to a 2016 survey by TNS. The service hosts about 28 million user accounts with about 15,000 new accounts opened daily. Yandex.Money also offers online merchants Yandex.Checkout. Currently, more than 76,000 online stores across the globe use Yandex.Checkout.
Yandex.Money is trying to disrupt the existing ecosystem. People used to go to a bank to pay bills, wait in a line for a long time; today they can spend this time with their family while their e-wallet automatically pays their monthly utility bills, taxes, fines, etc. There is a perception that Russia is a cash-based country. However, the latest research by TNS demonstrated that paying for goods and services online is no longer uncommon for Russian consumers. Things are changing. More than 92% of Russian Internet users said that they paid for goods and services online. Cash is still in use, but Yandex.Money sees it as an opportunity, rather than a reason for pessimism. The presence of users who still prefer cash to online payments shows that we have a lot of space to grow.
Yandex.Money is leveraging new smart systems to further automate the payment process. In addition to automatic payments based on calendar or low balance, these systems can also detect and suggest payments. For instance, when a user is in a public transportation location or a petrol station, the e-wallet can recognize his or her location and suggest paying for a ride or the petrol directly from the mobile app. These systems require users to take fewer actions when making everyday life payments—they only have to push “yes” to a suggested payment.
Yandex.Money always trys to be the first to bring innovations in the world of fintech. For instance, Yandex.Money has recently become the first company in Russia to introduce money transfers via iMessage. Apple gadget owners who have the Yandex.Money app are now able to send money directly through the messenger. Yandex.Money also allows users to create a group chat to raise funds for a joint purpose without leaving the messenger. The feature is perfect for friends pooling money toward a joint present or a dinner out.
Yandex.Money believes that online shopping in apps and on websites can be as simple as the touch of a finger, so there’s no need to manually fill out lengthy payment forms or repeatedly type in shipping and billing information. For instance, Yandex.Money has recently brought its users Apple Pay, which is transforming mobile payments with an easy, secure and private way to pay in stores, apps and on the web. With Yandex.Money Apple users can now make easy, secure and private payments with Apple Pay — all they have to do is open an e-wallet and add a virtual MasterCard. Yandex.Money users can pay via Apple Pay by adding their plastic or virtual prepaid Yandex.Money cards to Apple Wallet. At Yandex.Money, we are trying to make innovative payment technology accessible to all users regardless of the bank they use. In fact, users don’t have to be clients of a bank at all.
This year Yandex.Checkout launched a new feature for merchants: the ability to accept payments through QR-codes. To make a payment, users simply open the Yandex.Money app on their phones and point at a QR-code with their smartphone’s camera. Once the code is scanned, a user chooses a payment method — either Yandex.Money e-wallet or a bank card linked to it. QR-codes are an extremely convenient tool for making payments that sellers can place on material or online platforms: whether on a door at a national park allowing customers to make a charitable donation or on buses that will help passengers pay for a ride.
Yandex.Money also offers its customers innovative payments from Yandex Search – the so called ‘wizards’, which allow users to make payments without leaving the search results page. The new ‘wizards’ appear for relevant searches queries. For instance, one of the ‘wizards’ helps users browse and purchase tickets to the cinema, another enables users to pay for traffic fines, others allow to pay for internet, telephone, other utility services. Users just have to fill out the form in the interactive window on the search results page and pay directly through the search engine. From a single e-wallet, Yandex.Money has transformed into a large payment company in Eastern Europe. Being one of the leading fintech companies of the region, Yandex.Money has its own ecosystem with millions of users and thousands of merchants
