2018 MARC report: Most popular payment solutions among online stores in Russia

June 22, 2018

MARC, a global research center, has conducted a study on the online payment solutions used by Russian websites and the changes in their preferences within the past year. The report is based on the information provided by 124,000 websites that sell various products and services to Russian consumers.

The number of websites that accept online payments has grown by 7%—from 116,000 in late 2016 to 124,000 in late 2017. The increase was 32% for the previous year, and according to the MARC analysts, this slowing of growth corresponds to increased online payment penetration in Russia.

«In 2016, the sharp increase was achieved by the mass integration of online payment services into websites that had previously offered only cash payments. Nowadays, most online stores already have an online payment form, so the growth comes from either new, recently established companies, or the companies that still don’t provide online payment services,» says Boris Khatutsky, managing director of MARC.

Most websites accept online payments through payment aggregators: as in the previous year, they make up 66% of websites accepting online payments. The number of websites using payment gateways has decreased from 7% to 4%. Fewer websites integrate particular types of payment methods—for example, e-wallets—directly through the provider (22% compared to 24% last year). The number of companies using direct Internet acquiring from banks has increased from 13% to 17%. «Most websites integrate several payment methods at once. For example, bank card payments are usually accepted via acquiring bank or payment gateways, whereas other payments are accepted via payment aggregators. This is less common nowadays, as more and more websites prefer to integrate all the relevant payment methods via payment aggregator,» explains Boris Khatutsky.

Russian websites use the services of about 60 payment aggregators and gateways. The most popular payment aggregator of 2017 is Yandex.Checkout: it is used by almost 31.7% of websites. This rate has risen by 2.1%. The second most popular payment aggregator is Robokassa: the number of websites accepting payments via it has decreased from 10.3% in late 2016 to 9.2% in late 2017. The share of the three following aggregators has remained virtually unchanged: 4.8% of websites work with Payeer, 4.3% use UnitPay, and about 3% accept payments via PayAnyWay, Wallet One, and Interkassa. RBK Money, PayMaster and Platron are used by about 2% websites each. About 11% of websites work with other aggregators, including PayU, Uniteller, PayOnline, Assist and ECommPay. Each of these aggregators accounts for 0.9 to 1.3% of websites. Usually websites use them as the main provider of payment solutions or in addition to their main one.

The study was conducted in the first quarter of 2018 by comparing indexes for the fourth quarters of 2016/2017 of Russian websites that accept online payments.

For access to full version of the report, please, click here.

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About MARC

Market Adjustment Research Center (MARC) is an international full-service research company. MARC focuses on estimation of advertisement campaigns effectiveness, client satisfaction, and segmentation of financial, FMCG, automotive, telecommunication, and pharmaceutical markets. MARC is chosen by many Russian and international clients, such as Sberbank, Raiffeisenbank, VTB Group, Land Rover, Dr.Reddy’s, X5 Retail Group, MTS, Tele2 and others. MARC analysts are members of the Marketing Research Association (MRA) and The European Society for Opinion and Market Research (ESOMAR). Offices are located in Russia and the US.

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About Yandex.Checkout

Yandex.Checkout is the leading service for accepting online payments in Russia. Yandex.Checkout received the Emerging Payment Award at the Merchant Payments Ecosystem conference (Berlin) in 2017. With this payment solution, merchants from all over the world can offer Russian consumers the online payment methods most popular among Russians and CIS-citizens: bank cards, e-wallets, mobile phones, cash via mobile retailers and payment kiosks (there are over 250 thousand cash-acceptance points all over CIS). Currently, more than 90,000 online stores across the globe use Yandex.Checkout.

Yandex.Checkout was launched by Yandex.Money in 2013. Yandex.Money is the joint venture of search engine Yandex (NASDAQ: YNDX), and Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia. Yandex.Money also offers consumers easy, safe, and reliable methods of paying online on its own site and mobile app. The service hosts about 35 million user accounts. Yandex.Money is the largest electronic payments service in Russia, according to a 2017 survey by Mediascope.