Commercial banks will need investments of between 120 million and more than 200 million rubles to connect to the national digital currency platform. This was stated by experts interviewed by Kommersant.
This includes “costs for infrastructure, information security, application software and integration work with existing intra-bank systems, and as the number of connected clients and the number of transactions increases, additional investments will be required in infrastructure development and the purchase of licenses.”
“Even for an average bank, the amount of investment in hardware will be no less than 40 million rubles, and in software – no less than 80 million rubles,” one of the publication’s sources estimated.
It is also necessary to take into account the costs of highly qualified personnel both at the implementation stage and in further support of operational activities.
Experts believe that the amounts they cited are unaffordable for small banks, since they exceed their annual IT infrastructure budget several times. At the same time, even medium-sized banks will find it difficult to make money on these investments.
According to market participants, cloud technologies and boxed solutions can reduce the cost of entry.
According to the plans of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, 13 commercial banks, which are systemically important credit institutions, must provide clients with the opportunity to operate with the digital ruble as early as July 1, 2025.
The regulator is confident that the proposed timeframes are sufficient for connection, since “at the first stage we are talking about the largest banks, which are the most technologically advanced on the market, and some of them are already connected to the platform and are piloting operations with digital rubles.”
In October 2023, financial institutions were already calculating the costs of implementing the technology. Rosbank estimated its expenses for two years at 150 million rubles.
Let us recall that the law on the national cryptocurrency came into force on August 1, 2023. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation prescribed requirements for banks on the information protection of transactions with digital rubles and set tariffs for them.
Testing of CBDC for individuals and legal entities in the Russian Federation started on August 15. The list of its participants will be expanded by dozens of new banks by the end of 2024. At the same time, most Russians are not interested in using the instrument, according to the survey.
