Yandex.Checkout and Sberbank introduce an online payment service for businesses

October 18, 2018

Yandex.Checkout and Sberbank have launched the B2B Payments service allowing companies to accept online payments from corporate clients as easily as from individuals. A company can start using the service simply by embedding the button for accepting payments via the Sberbank Business Online system at its website. The new feature will help reduce the time frame of the payment process between businesses from 1–3 days to 1–3 minutes. Yandex.Checkout and Sberbank are the first to offer an online payment technology of this type in Russia.

The B2B Payments service can be activated only via Yandex.Checkout. Right now, the service is available to companies with a settlement account in Sberbank. There are about 2 million of them, or 30% of all the number of micro-, small, and medium enterprises in Russia (according to the Unified Register of the Federal Tax Service). Among the first customers of B2B Payments are mobile network operators, recruiting services, commodity sector enterprises, IT companies. Potentially, the service can be used by all Russian organizations that work with corporate clients.

The new service makes the process of paying a B2B invoice very simple: select the product or service on the seller’s website, click the «Pay via Sberbank Business Online» button, log in to the online bank, and confirm the payment by text message password. No need to enter any product or seller details as the invoice is generated automatically. The seller will receive the payment notification and the information about the buyer’s organization required for closing documents immediately after the payment. After that, the seller will be able to ship the product or provide the service without waiting for the money to be credited to their bank account or for the buyer to send a payment order.

The usual process of B2B payments is more complicated and longer: the seller invoices the buyer in writing or in electronic form, then the buyer sends the invoice to the accounting department or enters the data into the accounting program manually. After that, the buyer makes a payment and waits for the money to be credited to the seller’s bank account. For a quick confirmation of the payment, the buyer can send the scan of the payment order to the seller. If we take into account all the time it takes to process and send the documents, even in electronic form, it would result in a period of 1 to 3 days depending on the size of the organization and the speed of its accounting department.

«The ability to accept B2B payments online will help companies not only to simplify settlements with business clients, but to improve a number of business indicators as well, particularly, when it comes to increasing the payment conversion and saving the accountant’s time. Thanks to instant payment notifications, the seller will be able to ship the product or provide the service immediately, decreasing the downtime and increasing the turnover in the warehouse,» says Ivan Glazachev, CEO at Yandex.Money. «Sberbank was the first among Russian banks to develop a special API for B2B payments, and Yandex.Checkout became the first aggregator to make such payments available to millions of organizations.»

«The B2B payments service radically changes the idea of the payment for products by companies. The process of an online purchase for a business becomes identical to that for a regular customer: the client simply selects the desired product and payment method, clicks a button, proceeds to the online bank where they find an already completed payment order. All they need to do is sign and send a payment. The store is notified about the payment immediately,» says Anatoly Popov, Deputy Chairman of the Board at Sberbank. «This service can become a unique competitive advantage and increase conversions for a number of companies that are clients of Sberbank accepting online payments: mobile network operators, retailers, telecom and IT companies, recruiting services, and many others.»

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About Yandex.Checkout

Yandex.Checkout is the leading service for accepting online payments in Russia, according to a 2018 survey by MARC. 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, and 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.

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About Sberbank Business Online

Sberbank Business Online is one of the largest corporate online banks in Central and Eastern Europe currently working with more than 1.9 million organizations. Sberbank Business Online offers a wide range of opportunities for businesses of any scale and type of activity as well as an entire ecosystem of non-financial services for business development and management.

In 2018, the international business magazine Global Finance recognized Sberbank Business Online as the best online bank for businesses in Russia with the average user rating of 4.4 out of 5. Sberbank Business Online has received several prestigious domestic and international awards such as Best Customer Experience Manager at CX Awards Russia 2017, Best Interface and User Experience Design at Red Dot Communication Design Award 2017, and Best Digital Services for Corporate Clients in Central and Eastern Europe by Global Finance in 2018.