Mir national payment system cards. Archival photoMOSCOW, January 19The Russian payment system Mir became the most popular payment system for goods on the website of the Wildberries online retailer last year, the company's press service told RIA Novosti.
"The volume of payments that were made by Russians to Wildberries through the domestic payment system "Mir", for the first time exceeded similar indicators of foreign payment systems on an annualized basis. The total volume of payments through "Mir" in 2021 amounted to over 250 billion rubles, which was an absolute record", — said the retailer.
The largest volume of transactions, according to the company, fell on December and amounted to 41 billion rubles — this is the period of the high season, when Russians actively made New Year's purchases. Compared to December 2020, the volume of payments increased by 2.8 times year on year. Clients also actively used the Fast Payment System for payment — in December it showed an increase of 17.6 times compared to December 2020. Last summer, a conflict broke out between Wildberries and the international payment systems Visa and Mastercard due to the procedure for pricing goods. On August 17, Wildberries announced a reduction in prices when paying using Russian payment systems — Mir cards, the Fast Payment System and the SberPay service. The company then explained that the difference in cost is achieved due to lower commissions when processing transactions by domestic systems. Visa and Mastercard criticized the retailer's decision. Wildberries, in turn, accused them of putting pressure on Russian banks, emphasizing that we are talking about discounts for buyers, depending on which payment system they use to pay for the goods. Later, the retailer changed the format for displaying its prices for goods, removing from it the mention of the presence of a commission in case of payment with Visa and Mastercard cards. After that, Visa announced that it no longer records violations of the rules by Wildberries.