Banking services should develop only in Russian messengers, minister says

MOSCOW. March 16 (Interfax) - Russia does not plan to restrict the use of foreign messengers for personal communications, but in "sensitive" areas, such as the banking sector, services should be provided only on Russian platforms, Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadayev said.

"We by no means want to restrict the work of foreign messengers for personal messages, communication, but there are certain areas where we will after all insist on the priority of a Russian messenger. Among other things, we had a question regarding the implementation of bank payment services on the basis of a messenger. Here our position together with the Central Bank is that this should only be in Russian messengers," Shadayev said at a meeting of the State Duma Information Policy Committee.

"We are in favour of competition here, but in certain segments we will continue to propose and insist on government regulation, where there are sensitive areas or sensitive zones, and where this is justified," Shadayev said.

Russia can have a worthy alternative to foreign messengers in the form of VK Messenger, which has "decent" user numbers, he said.

He also said that, after the work of a number of foreign services was restricted in Russia in 2022, Telegram's share of mobile providers' traffic tripled, and the shares of VKontakte and Odnoklassniki also grew significantly.

However, the RuTube vide service did not see a significant increase in traffic. "That is, in this sense our colleagues did not become beneficiaries of the restriction of access to those social networks that violate Russian legislation," Shadayev said.

He said the user video segment is rapidly growing within VK. "The figures that we have enable us to expect that VKontakte, probably, at some point in the medium term certainly will be able to lay claim to some of the functions of a user video aggregator," Shadayev said.