Banking and Stock Exchange, Finance, Economics (Russia)
August 25, 2006 Friday

There are to-date about 20 money transfer systems in Russia. New
systems start to oust recognized leaders of the market

Reference: Tatiana Yemelyanova, "Transfer Difficulties", Nezavisimaya
Gazeta, August 14, 2006, p.5.

"Some time ago, money transfer systems were associated with
international brands, such as Western Union, Money Gram and Travelax.

However, money transfer systems from the CIS countries, including
Anelik (Armenia) and PrivatMoney (Ukraine), have lately started to
press the market leaders," says Andrei Pogoryansky, the deputy board
chairman of OAO Gorodskoy Klientsky Bank. At present, this bank
offers two types of money transfers – through Western Union and
Anelik and both of them are in demand. MDM-Bank offers the same two
systems to its customers. "Every system has its customers. Western
Union has the largest network and positions itself as the fastest
system. However, Western Union’s commission fees are higher compared
with other operators. Anelik charges low commission fees for a money
transfer within 24 hours," says Ivan Artamonov, senior vice president
of MDM-Bank.

CONTACT, a Russian international system of money transfers and
payments, is gaining popularity. "The system has over 27 thousand
service points in 79 countries of the world. Over 11 thousand persons
make use of its services daily. In 2005, the amount of money
transfers through the CONTACT system came to more than $900 million.

>>From March 2005 till March 2006, the amount of transactions exceeded
$1 billion," said Sergey Bludov, the deputy board chairman of
RusSlavBank.

The Post of Russia made up its mind to intensify competition on the
money transfer market and launched the Cyber-Money project. "About 40
thousand post offices all over Russia have taken part in the project.

However, the term of delivery of money to a remittee is still rather
long – about 48 hours," Andrei Pogoryansky says.

Experts make mention of one more serious competitor – Sberbank. This
year, Sberbank has launched a new system of express money transfers
Blitz based on the application of modern bank technologies and
high-speed communication channels. Sberbank’s press service informed
that over 4.5 thousand branches of the bank had already been
connected to the system and their number would increase to 5 thousand
by the end of this quarter. The service is in demand, according to
Sberbank: transfers to the amount of over 7 billion rubles have been
made within six months of operation of the system.

The Fast Post system is the most well-known Russian system. It takes
a few minutes to transfer money inside Russia and to the CIS
countries with the help of this system. Migom and Unistream are aimed
at the same regions.