The Moscow Metro on Friday rolled out what authorities have touted as the world’s first fare payment system based on facial recognition technology. The cashless, cardless and phone-less system, called ‘Face Pay,’ has been fitted at special turnstiles across the Russian capital’s more than 240 metro stations. “To enter the metro, passengers won’t need a …
Moscow metro introduces “world’s first” pay-by-face system Read More
Aviasales.ru, a leading search engine for flights and hotel bookings, has attracted $43 million from Elbrus Capital and iTech Capital, two PE/VC firms with Russian roots. The latter had already invested $10 million in the company seven years ago, in 2014. The latest capital injection — which is sizable by Russian standards — will help the company launch new …
Aviasales.ru secures $43 million from Elbrus Capital and iTech Capital funds Read More
Moscow Metro has partnered with VTB, a leading Russian financial institution, and Google to launch a new payment service. Users with the Google Pay payment service and a Mastercard card can now instantly pay for their metro ride: they just need to hold their smartphone above the reader at the turnstiles. In the near future, the new …
Commuters in Moscow will soon be able to take a ride on the metro with just a turn of their heads, as the Russian capital embraces next-generation facial payment technology. At least one turnstile at each metro station will be equipped with the contactless facial recognition technology as soon as next spring, Moscow authorities say. The system, which …
Moscow Metro to introduce facial payment technology Read More
The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has provided finances to a Russian company for the first time in more than five years under its emergency coronavirus support fund. The EBRD stopped making active investments in the country in 2014, following Western sanctions stemming from the events in Ukraine and Crimea. The group has also wound …
EBRD provides rescue financing to Travelata and other Russian portfolio companies Read More
Can a Russian billionaire become a digital leader after making his fortune in steel? “We have several investments related to human needs: education, medicine, traveling and retail. We are thinking of creating an ecosystem based on these assets – a kind of Amazon,” Alexey Mordashov told Bloomberg. “Each of these areas is on the verge of great change,” …
Russian billionaire Alexey Mordashov wants to create “a kind of Amazon” Read More
Last month EightyDays, a US startup born in Belarus, secured an undisclosed amount in a seed round of funding from Artem Lebedev. The famous Russian designer saw in this startup’s technology “an incredible, fantastic, extraordinary new way of making travel bookings online” (see video). EightyDays has created a multi-destination booking service intended for international travellers planning a …
Russian designer invests in US startup to reinvent online travel booking Read More
Moscow Vice Mayor Maxim Liksutov has told the BBC Russian Service that the Russian capital’s municipal government is tracking the movements of its residents using tools as diverse as taxi data, cell phone data, security cameras, data from Troika multi-ride metro passes, and customer complaints about the city’s public transport system. Liksutov said that all this geoanalytical …
In December last year Vostok New Ventures (VNV), a major Swedish investment firm operating internationally, invested $4.5 million in online bus ticketing platform Busfor, in addition to the $4 million it had injected in the company in mid-2018. The latest transaction was revealed yestersday by business daily Kommersant, based on VNV’s latest financial report and …
Swedish investor VNV injected $8.5 million in Busfor in 2018 Read More
Vostok New Ventures (VNV), a major Swedish investment firm operating internationally, invested $4 million in the Eastern European online bus ticketing platform Busfor. The transaction, which has been disclosed in the firm’s most recent financial report, took place at the end of the second quarter of this year. Busfor — previously known as Gillbus — aims …
InVenture Partners, a major Moscow-based fund, has sold its share in Busfor, an online bus ticketing and distribution platform based in Moscow, Russia, and Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine. The news was reported earlier this month by Russian business daily Vedomosti. The stake was acquired for an undisclosed amount by private equity funds Baring Vostok Capital Partners and …
Almaz Capital, an international venture fund with Eastern-European roots, and Sistema VC, the venture arm of the Russian conglomerate Sistema, have invested $4 million in a US mobile travel app called FinalPrice. With FinalPrice’s iOS mobile app, users “get access to the secret cache of ultra-low prices on flights, hotels, and car rentals” for $99 per …
Almaz Capital and Sistema VC invest $4 million in US mobile travel service Read More
