The Bank of Russia (CB) presented a road map for bringing Russian ATMs to the market, Kommersant reports.

According to the document, presented during a meeting of the Council on Cash Circulation, this autumn, the largest Russian banks will receive samples of domestic ATMs manufactured by BFS and SAGA for testing.

If successful, serial production of ATMs will begin, and in the first quarter of next year, banks will receive hundreds of batches.

However, Alexei Voylukov, Vice-President of the Association of Banks of Russia, named more cautious delivery dates for the first batches of domestic ATMs. He noted that after serial batches enter the market, manufacturers will continue work on further localization, in stages over the next two years.



Experts claim that a fully Russian-made ATM, 100% localized in the country, is technically impossible. Kommersant source notes that it is possible to make the case, the mechanical part of the design of an ATM in the country, but “the electronic stuffing for the most part is not produced in Russia and is unlikely to be produced soon.” So the first Russian ATMs, according to the interlocutor of the publication, will most likely have a Russian case with imported content to a greater or lesser degree of localization.

According to Roman Prokhorov, the chairman of the board of the Financial Innovations Association, the production of ATMs is a high-tech industry, it will be impossible to ensure rapid import substitution in it, so there will be a need to use the existing import opportunities, including “parallel” ones.

In turn, Dmitry Vishnyakov, an independent expert in the payment card market, noted that there is absolutely no need to build the Russian production of ATMs urgently. “Cash withdrawal is a service that cardholders use less and less,” he explained. According to him, for Russian banks it will be more relevant to have multifunctional devices that can combine the function of issuing cash with many others and provide citizens with access to financial services from regions with low rate of Internet and mobile communications penetration.

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