Population
143M
Online population
136M
Currency
RUB
Population - 143M
In late 2025, 75.8% of Russia’s population lived in urban centres, whereas 24.2% lived in rural areas.
Internet penetration - 94.4%
There were ****136 million internet users in Russia at the end of 2025.
Russia’s payment market is moving beyond Mir cards into a wider mix of domestic payment technologies. Mir remains the backbone of card payments, while the Faster Payments System (SBP) has grown from instant bank transfers into a major way to pay merchants directly from a bank account.
In 2026, the fastest growth is happening around the next layer: QR codes, biometric payments and bank payment apps now account for 15.1% of non-cash payment value. QR and biometric payments alone reached 1.1 billion purchases in Q2, while Bluetooth payments — a domestic way to make contactless payments from a phone — reached 86 million.
Russia is now pulling these different options into one system. Since September 1, every bank must support a universal QR code, so a customer can scan once and choose between SBP, a bank’s own payment service or instalments. The digital rouble will also be an option soon.
Open Banking is also moving from pilot projects towards formal implementation. After major financial institutions tested Open APIs (from 2024), the Bank of Russia updated its standards in December 2025 and is now preparing the regulatory framework for mandatory adoption by major market participants. The model allows customers to consent to the sharing of financial data across institutions, enabling services such as multi-bank management and personalised financial offers.
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What if money could follow instructions?
On 18 June 2026, the Bank of Russia published a concept for a Commercial Smart Contracts Platform within the digital-ruble infrastructure. The proposal would allow banks and other market participants to develop and offer their own smart contracts — programmes that automatically execute transactions when predefined conditions are met. Possible applications include releasing a supplier’s payment once goods have been delivered or automating payments linked to specific stages of a contract.
The proposal is currently under consultation, with the Bank of Russia accepting comments until 30 September 2026. No implementation date has been announced yet.
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AI is becoming a strategic priority for Russia’s financial sector, with applications spanning fraud detection, risk assessment and customer service. In 2026, the Bank of Russia has also focused on the infrastructure and safeguards required to deploy AI at scale, including shared data platforms for AI development and security requirements for systems operating autonomously in critical financial processes such as payments.
Russia’s banking sector is large but highly concentrated around a handful of national banks.
