Market not expressing explicit interest in privatization of NPCS - Central Bank of Russia
YEKATERINBURG. Feb 19 (Interfax) - The market has not expressed strong interest in the privatization of the National Payment Card System (NPCS, the operator of Mir cards), the head of the payment system department of the Central Bank of Russia Alla Bakina said.
At the end of September 2025, the CBR published a report in which it stated that it would assess the possibility and mechanisms of transferring a number of NPCS services to private sector management. Among the possible scenarios considered were the sale of a minority stake or a spin-off of a number of services.
"We received feedback. It unfortunately came slightly outside the timeframe we had offered the market for discussion. But we are currently preparing it, aggregating it in order to also make this feedback open and publish it," Bakina told journalists on the sidelines of the Cybersecurity in Finance forum.
"The market did not express any explicit interest in privatization, so for now this issue is not on the table. But we are ready to consider it further if there are specific proposals," she said.
When selling a minority stake in the NPCS to market participants, the Central Bank was to retain a controlling stake (not less than 50% plus one share). The second possible option was to spin off a number of NPCS services into a separate company (spin-off mechanism) with subsequent incorporation or sale of the company or its stake to market participants. The Central Bank did not specify in the report which specific services these would be.
The National Payment Card System was created by the Russian authorities in 2014 after the introduction of a number of sanctions against Russia. The NPCS announced the start of issuing the first Mir cards in December 2015. The NPCS also processes transactions on cards of international payment systems Visa and Mastercard, which in March 2022 simultaneously announced the suspension of their operations in the Russian market due to the conflict in Ukraine. The Central Bank of Russia is the sole shareholder of the NPCS.
