Tax amendments cause growth in cashless payments to halt - Sberbank CEO Gref

MOSCOW. Feb 26 (Interfax) - Sberbank is seeing a halt in growth in cashless payments owing to the tax amendments, CEO Herman Gref said during a conference call.

"We had very good positive dynamics in cashless transactions. It has now stopped. Clearly, a number of tax initiatives have led to the substitution of cash for cashless transactions," Gref said.

"I cannot yet say that we have seen the effect of VAT on the trend. I think that the first quarter results will probably show this more clearly. We will definitely report this if we see it. So far, I cannot say that this has had any effect on VAT. Overall, the trend is that we were world champions in a number of indicators, and certainly in terms of dynamics. Now that momentum has been lost," Gref added.

The share of cashless payments in retail turnover increased by 2.2 percentage points to 88% in 2025 from 85.8% in 2024.

President Vladimir Putin at the end of November last year signed the law, which, effective January 1, repealed the VAT exemption, in effect since 2006, for transactions and services related to bankcards, as well as services provided by companies that transmit and process data between payment parties, namely processing and acquiring.

The general VAT rate increased from 20% to 22% effective January 1, 2026. Meantime, the revenue threshold for small businesses under the simplified tax system, after which they are obligated to pay VAT, was lowered to 20 million rubles.

"It is too soon to discuss the possible effect of tax changes on the payment structure of cash/cashless or the extent to which the risks of going underground have materialized. Our tax changes have been in effect since January 1, and of course, there are no data available to judge this at this time," Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina said on February 13.

"We will monitor, analyze, and draw some conclusions, but it is simply too early to do so," she added at the time.