Yandex.Money: Russians are Donating To Charity Twice as Much as They Did Last Year

November 28, 2017

#GivingTuesday is coming to Russia for the second year in a row. Celebrated on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving (in the U.S.) and the widely recognized shopping events Black Friday and Cyber Monday, #GivingTuesday kicks off the charitable season, when many focus on their holiday and end-of-year giving.

Yandex.Money analysts studied how Russians use its online payment service to donate to charitable foundations, as well as to crowdfunders raising funds for private and public projects. The study accounted for transfers made via Yandex.Money, transactions carried out via Yandex.Checkout payment solution and the tools for crowdfunding — yasobe.ru service, as well as buttons and forms for fund acceptance.

From January to November 2017, Russians have donated to charity and crowdfunding sites about 1.2 billion Russian Rubles ($20.6 million). That sum is twice bigger than the one in the same period last year. Most often, Russians use Yandex.Money to send donations from e-wallets and bank cards.

In general, the average amount of a donation given by people across the country to charities and crowdfunding sites is 722 Russian Rubles ($12.4), which is 13% more than it was a year ago. In a year the average donation amount grew by 16%, and, for crowdfunding, the number increased by a third. Still, users donate to charities more than they do to crowdfunding — 965 and 643 RUB ($16.55 and $11.04), respectively.

Those who donate to charities in Russia have slightly changed their preferences since last year: nowadays, people donate money more actively to individuals than foundations. This year, from January to November, users have donated to foundations 10% more funds than they did in the same period of 2016. At the same time, the total amount of donations to individuals has increased by 33%. Russians also seem to have put more trust into crowdfounding. In the first eleven months of this year, people have donated to them 2.7 times more funds than they did in the same period of 2016.

The largest donations to charities and crowdfunding sites come from the residents of the Central region (943 RUB = $16.2), Siberia (883 RUB = $15.5), and the Far East (873 RUB = $14.98). The smallest donation amount comes from the residents of the Volga Federal District, averaging at 550 RUB ($9.44).

——

About Yandex.Money

Yandex.Money is the largest electronic payments service in Russia, according to the 2017 survey by Mediascope. 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 for Android, iOS, watchOS, Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile. Customers can also use Yandex.Money cards as a form of payment: both plastic and virtual Mastercards are available for issuing. The service hosts about 34 million user accounts with about 15,000 new accounts opened daily. By spring 2017, Yandex.Money has issued more than 600,000 plastic cards and 11 million virtual Mastercards.

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 and CIS. Currently, more than 76,000 online stores across the globe use Yandex.Checkout.