Yandex.Money to Launch Payments via Apple Watch

July 15, 2016

Yandex.Money, the largest online payment service in Russia according to TNS, now offers users the ability to pay via the Yandex.Money app on Apple Watch. Users can top up their mobile phones or transfer money to friends right from their wrist. The app also includes options for checking the balance of an account and receiving push notifications.

Apple Watch will show users all the payments they’ve saved in their Favorites folder on the web or mobile version of Yandex.Money. Users can add as many payment options as they want.

Yandex.Money also maintains mobile applications for iOS, Android, Windows 10, and Windows Phone. A study by AC&M Consulting showed that more than 12 million users in Russia complete payments through mobile devices. They transfer money to other users, pay bills, taxes, and fines, or shop online according to a 2016 TNS survey.

According to IDC, in 2015, Apple Watch held 60% of the smart watches market. In total, Apple sold around 12 million devices last year. By 2019, the final year of the forecast, total shipments are expected to reach 214.6 million units, resulting in a five-year compound annual growth rate of 28%.

Yandex.Money is the largest electronic payments service in Russia, according to a 2016 survey by TNS. The service is the joint venture of the search engine Yandex (NASDAQ: YNDX), and Sberbank. Yandex.Money offers consumers easy, safe, and reliable methods of paying online on its own site and mobile app. The service hosts about 25 million user accounts with about 15,000 new accounts opened daily. Yandex.Money also offers online merchants Yandex.Checkout. The service allows merchants to accept all the online payment methods most popular among Russians: credit cards, e-wallets, mobile billing through the top Russian providers, and cash via over 250,000 cash-acceptance points all over the country. Currently, more than 76,000 online stores in Russia and CIS countries use Yandex.Checkout.