Last week Yandex.Money, a leading online payment service in Russia, released Yandex.Gas, a new application intended for drivers to pay for fuel remotely — without leaving their car and queueing at the cash register. Payment can be made with the Yandex.Money e-wallet or using a Mastercard bank card. Yandex.Money plans to expand the range of available payment methods next year.
The application also shows the closest gas station, and can remember card data to make further payments easier. The service is commission-free, and all discounts and special offers available at the gas station are valid. Lukoil’s loyalty cards can also be added easily to the application in order to accumulate points.
The app, which can already be used in Lukoil’s gas stations in Moscow, will soon be supported in the 2250 stations of the company’s network across Russia. Almost one in two (46.2%) Russian drivers use Lukoil stations, according to the company, which cites Autostat data.
The system was developed in partnership with Mastercard — which is celebrating 20 years of operations in Russia — and Licard, a subsidiary Russian oil giant Lukoil.
“Yandex has built a whole ecosystem of services helping users in different life situations,” stated Ivan Glazachev, CEO of Yandex.Money. “Every month, these services are used by 14,5 million drivers: people pay transport tax and traffic fines using Yandex.Money services, they use Yandex.Navigator to plan the best route to the desired point and find a parking lot, and use Yandex.Parking to pay for that. Now, we’re going to make a driver’s life easier at gas stations. Yandex.Gas is the first remote payment service for gas in Russia with such a wide coverage of the gas stations network.”
Ayden teams up with Yandex.Money
Almost simultaneously, Yandex.Money announced that Adyen, a major global payment platform, has expanded its partnership with Yandex.Checkout, a branch of Yandex.Money that serves online merchants, to enable retailers worldwide to accept a variety of popular payments methods in Russia and the neighboring countries.
In a country where many online consumers are reluctant to use bank cards to pay online, the alternative payment means managed by Yandex.Checkout include e-wallets, online banking, and cash via mobile retailers and payment kiosks.
“We see a great potential in the Russian market, where local payment methods dominate and the e-commerce market is booming. It’s very interesting for Adyen’s merchant base to start selling to Russia, the world’s largest country [by size],” stated Olivia Sicurani, Head of Local Payments at Adyen.
She added: “Thanks to Yandex.Checkout, our merchants can now offer a variety of most popular local payment methods (not only cards) without the need to set up a local entity, via one simple integration with Adyen.”
