VTB and QR Payments in China: What Lies Behind the Technical News

After 2022, Russian bank cards no longer function abroad in the standard mode, and the basic payment functionality for travelers had to be rebuilt from scratch. The solution via a mobile app makes it possible to operate without international card systems.

Technically, the service works as follows: the client pays in rubles, and the bank itself converts the amount into yuan at its internal exchange rate. This is convenient, but it is important to understand that a bank’s internal rate usually differs from the market rate, and it is this difference that forms the bank’s income from the transaction. The declared zero commission applies only to the transaction itself, not to the currency conversion cost.

The geography of the project itself is also noteworthy. China has now been added to Vietnam, Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and by the end of the year the list will expand to include several more countries. These are states with which Russia maintains stable tourism and trade ties and which have not joined the sanctions restrictions. The development of such services reflects the broader process of building a parallel payment architecture outside the Western financial system.

Author: Candidate of Economic Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of World Economy and World Finance at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation Tatyana Aleksandrovna Gorbacheva.