The number of users of Mir Pay contactless payment service this summer has grown more than 20 times compared with last summer.

Vedomosti has learnt about it from the National Payment Card System (NSPK) – the representative of Mir operator.

In July, the number of Mir cards added to the application on a monthly basis increased 5 times compared with the beginning of the year. The number of monthly payments increased 7 times.

In particular, according to Frank Media, more than 1 million VTB customers have connected to Mir Pay service since March. The number of such clients at Gazprombank increased 16 times in March. Over the past six months, about 200,000 holders of Mir cards of Gazprombank have connected to the system. Since February, Rosbank has recorded an 8-fold increase in the number of Mir card connections to Mir Pay system.

Mir Pay is an analogue of Apple Pay and Google Pay that left Russia. With this application, customers can pay for purchases with their smartphone using NFC technology. However, the service is only available to Android owners.

The Central Bank said as 1st of April, 347.1 million bank cards were issued in Russia, of which more than 129 million were Mir cards, the remaining were the gone Visa and Mastercard.

Since February, QR code payments through the Fast Payment System (SBP) of the Bank of Russia (CB) and its SBPay application have been developing in Russia. In the second quarter, banks record a multiple growth in demand for this payment method compared with the first quarter: the number of transactions, depending on the bank, increased 3-5 times, and the volume of payments – 2-2.5 times.



Some bank representatives claim that the two services will compete in the future if the NFC function appears in SBPay. Other experts say that SBPay and Mir Pay will compete only indirectly, since they use different payment technologies.

In addition, Mir Pay works only on Android devices, while SBPay is available on both Android and iOS.

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