Banking technologies

Moscow-based TalkBank raises $3 million to develop “bank in messengers”

June 18, 2021

A Russian neobank called TalkBank has neither physical branches, nor call centers, nor even a mobile app. Its principle consists in offering “a bank in messengers,” i.e. Telegram, Facebook, WhatsApp or Viber. “Digital financial assistance” is provided by a smart bot that “understands banking commands in natural language.”  Thus customers will be able to better plan their budget and …

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Russia’s top digital bank wants to offer crypto — but tough central bank policy stands in its way

June 19, 2021

Tinkoff, the biggest online bank in Russia, wants to offer cryptocurrency trading to its clients but says this will take time due to a tough stance from the country’s central bank. Oliver Hughes, Tinkoff’s CEO, said Thursday that “qualified investors who know what they’re doing” want to invest in crypto. “There’s no mechanism for us …

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Tinkoff launches AI-powered voice assistant on Clubhouse

March 13, 2021

Tinkoff, the Russian digital banking leader, has integrated its AI-powered voice assistant ‘Oleg’ into Clubhouse — claiming to be the first one in the world to do so. The capabilities of the voice assistant as a “a full-fledged Clubhouse user” are described as follows:  ‘Oleg’ can use its text-to-speech and speech-to-text capabilities (Tinkoff VoiceKit) in real time to “help …

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A challenge to Apple Pay: Yandex reportedly developing contactless payment service

February 11, 2021

Yandex plans to launch a contactless payment service, challenging Apple Pay, the leader on the Russian market in this segment, as reported by VTimes. According to an internal document seen by VTimes, the users of ‘Yandex Pay’ will be able to save their bank details in the system to settle purchases.  In an exchange with …

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Open banking startup secures $1.6 million from Russian-Belarusian state-backed fund

January 12, 2021

An award-winning fintech startup from Moscow, APIBank, has attracted 120 million rubles in Russia (some $1.6 million at the current exchange rate) from the Russian-Belarusian Investment Fund (RBF Ventures). As reported by CNews.ru, this is the first external capital infusion — in the form of a convertible loan — in this startup launched in 2018. The money will be used “to develop products for payment aggregators and marketplaces, and …

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Baring Vostok and Goldman Sachs acquire stake in major Russian financial and insurance portal

October 20, 2020

Russian billionaire Oleg Tinkov has sold his stake Sravni.ru, a major Russian finance and insurance marketplace, to Baring Vostok and Goldman Sachs, reports VC.RU. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Sravni.ru defines its mission as “to help people make the right choices and achieve financial goals.” Its users are assisted in choosing financial …

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Sber and Visa launch data lab with AI supercomputer

October 16, 2020

Sber, the Russian state-controlled financial and tech giant, is teaming up with Visa to launch “Russia’s first Data Lab.” The partners intend to “use anonymized data to track changes in customer behavior and design the most customized offerings for all users of card products by applying artificial intelligence and machine learning tools.”  “The move is aimed at …

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Tinkoff scraps $5.5 billion deal with Yandex, shares plunge

October 20, 2020

The proposed megamerger between Russia’s leading technology company Yandex and fast-growing challenger bank Tinkoff has been scrapped. In an announcement to the London Stock Exchange — where Tinkoff’s holding company TCS is listed — the bank said negotiations between the two sides had been “terminated, effective immediately.” Yandex and Tinkoff previously announced they had reached an “agreement …

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Yandex, MTS, etc.: Oleg Tinkov reportedly holding parallel talks to sell his online bank

October 15, 2020

The sale of Tinkoff Bank to Yandex is far from certain, Russian online publication The Bell wrote yesterday, just three weeks after the two companies announced an “agreement in principle” on a $5.5 billion merger. Oleg Tinkov, the owner of the online bank, is also considering other buyers — in particular mobile operator MTS, or …

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Tinkoff, VTB and Sberbank top Russian bank digitalization ranking

September 30, 2020

The Skolkovo Foundation and VR_Bank have evaluated the digitalization level of the top 50 Russian banks in the first half of 2020. Tinkoff Bank – which has just agreed an acquisition deal with Yandex – became the leader and moved up one place compared to 2019. It is followed by state-controlled bank VTB, which moved …

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10 Russian online banking features that you probably don’t have

January 7, 2020

Private banks and credit cards appeared in Russia relatively recently – in the early 1990s after the collapse of the USSR. The local banking system developed from scratch, and didn’t have to depend on old software solutions, thus avoiding many of the intermediate development stages that more advanced economies had to go through. As a …

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Sberbank makes AI-oriented supercomputer available to organizations “of any size”

December 2, 2019

Sberbank, the Russian financial and technological behemoth, is preparing “Russia’s fastest supercomputer” for commercial launch. This computational capacity was unveiled at an industry conference last month by Sberbank CEO German Gref in presence of President Putin . The supercomputer will be made available to customers of SberCloud, Sberbank’s cloud solution, starting from December 12 as scheduled by the …

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