WebMoney is an online payment settlement system established in

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

in 1998. It is one of the largest electronic payments processors in Russia by number of users, with the company reporting 45 million registered accounts and 300,000 active weekly users in early 2020, and 100,000 stores accepting payments via the system. WebMoney is owned and operated by WM Transfer Ltd.

Service

WebMoney users' funds are stored in a "purse", which holds

electronic money Digital currency (digital money, electronic money or electronic currency) is any currency, money, or money-like asset that is primarily managed, stored or exchanged on digital computer systems, especially over the internet. Types of digital cu ...

corresponding to an underlying asset, such as a currency. The underlying assets for WebMoney units are held by a global network of companies that act as

guarantors In finance, a surety , surety bond or guaranty involves a promise by one party to assume responsibility for the debt obligation of a borrower if that borrower defaults. Usually, a surety bond or surety is a promise by a surety or guarantor to pa ...

for the payment system. Guarantors accept deposits in the underlying assets and issue the corresponding WebMoney units. WebMoney Transfer can be used for

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...

payments, and includes an

escrow An escrow is a contractual arrangement in which a third party (the stakeholder or escrow agent) receives and disburses money or property for the primary transacting parties, with the disbursement dependent on conditions agreed to by the transacti ...

system. It charges 0.8% of the transacted amount in fees, up to a maximum fee of €50. WebMoney provides an application called WebMoney Keeper for using their payments services, for Microsoft Windows, Windows Phone, Android, iOS, and Blackberry. In 2006, security researcher Kris Kaspersky criticised WebMoney Keeper Classic for Windows, as it installed a low-level

device driver In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and ot ...

that allowed direct access to the I/O ports and accessed the hard disk directly using ATA commands instead of via the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

History

The company was founded in November 1998 in

as a money transfer system for

United States dollar The United States dollar ( symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the officia ...

s, in the wake of the

1998 Russian financial crisis The Russian financial crisis (also called the ruble crisis or the Russian flu) began in Russia on 17 August 1998. It resulted in the Russian government and the Russian Central Bank devaluing the ruble and defaulting on its debt. The crisis had s ...

that had led to increased US dollar use in

. In November 2015, WebMoney Europe Ltd, based in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

, was granted an FCA licence to issue

e-money Digital currency (digital money, electronic money or electronic currency) is any currency, money, or money-like asset that is primarily managed, stored or exchanged on digital computer systems, especially over the internet. Types of digital cu ...

within the

European Economic Area The European Economic Area (EEA) was established via the ''Agreement on the European Economic Area'', an international agreement which enables the extension of the European Union's single market to member states of the European Free Trade Ass ...

. On 01-01-2021, the company terminated its agreements with all WebMoney EUR wallet holders as a result of Brexit. In 2019,

Sberbank PJSC Sberbank (russian: Сбербанк, initially a contraction of russian: сберегательный банк, translit=sberegatelnyy bank, lit=savings bank, link=no) is a Russian majority state-owned banking and financial services compan ...

said that WebMoney had joined its instant transfer ecosystem, allowing clients to make instant transfers from Sberbank cards to WebMoney purses and vice versa. The recipient’s phone number (which the card or purse is tied to) is needed to transfer funds. In March 2019, the international settlement system WebMoney introduced a

video identification Automatic content recognition (ACR) is a technology to identify content played on a media device or present within a media file. Devices implementing ACR can allow the device or the manufacturer to collect content consumption information automatic ...

system for customers, which allows you to verify your identity remotely. The WebMoney Transfer system offered the solution of accepting payments via

QR code A QR code (an initialism for quick response code) is a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional barcode) invented in 1994 by the Japanese company Denso Wave. A barcode is a machine-readable optical label that can contain information about th ...

for restaurants and shops. Customers need to scan a QR code displayed on the cash till screen and confirm the payment. In 2019,

Burger King Burger King (BK) is an American-based multinational chain store, chain of hamburger fast food restaurants. Headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Florida, the company was founded in 1953 as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida–based res ...

Russia has partnered with WebMoney Transfer to integrate QR code payments for customers. On February 11, 2022, the

Central Bank of Russian Federation The Central Bank of the Russian Federation (CBR; ), doing business as the Bank of Russia (russian: Банк России}), is the central bank of the Russian Federation. The bank was established on July 13, 1990. The predecessor of the bank can ...

revoked the license of KKB Bank JSC, the guarantor and the settlement bank for WebMoney's

Russian ruble ''hum''; cv, тенкĕ ''tenke''; kv, шайт ''shayt''; Lak: къуруш ''k'urush''; Mari: теҥге ''tenge''; os, сом ''som''; tt-Cyrl, сум ''sum''; udm, манет ''manet''; sah, солкуобай ''solkuobay'' , name_ab ...

wallets, freezing WebMoney's funds on KKB's accounts.

In Ukraine

In June 2013, the

Ukrainian government The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine ( uk, Кабінет Міністрів України, translit=Kabinet Ministriv Ukrainy; shortened to CabMin), commonly referred to as the Government of Ukraine ( uk, Уряд України, ''Uriad Ukrai ...

seized computer equipment from the Ukrainian guarantor and froze 60 million UAH (US$7.5 million) of funds residing on guarantor's accounts in Ukraine, causing Ukrainian WebMoney transactions to be blocked. Officials of the

Ministry of Revenues and Duties The Ministry of Revenues and Duties ( uk, Міністерство доходів і зборів України) was a government ministry of Ukraine. The ministry was created on 24 December 2012 by a Decree of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanuk ...

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

said that there were major irregularities in the operations of the company acting as the Ukrainian guarantor, and that the rules of the operation of the payment system were not agreed with the

National Bank of Ukraine National Bank of Ukraine ( uk, Національний банк України) or NBU ( uk, НБУ) is the central bank of Ukraine – a government body responsible for unified state policy in the field of country's monetary circulation, includ ...

. The ministry described WebMoney as an "illegal system" that was suspected of being used for

money laundering Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdictions ...

and

tax evasion Tax evasion is an illegal attempt to defeat the imposition of taxes by individuals, corporations, trusts, and others. Tax evasion often entails the deliberate misrepresentation of the taxpayer's affairs to the tax authorities to reduce the taxp ...

, and the central bank said that WebMoney did not have a licence to operate in Ukraine. WebMoney transactions resumed in Ukraine the following week. In March 2015, the Ukrainian guarantor's bank accounts were released after a court ruling. Later that year, the

and the

State Savings Bank of Ukraine The State Savings Bank of Ukraine, or Oschadbank ( uk, Ощадбанк), is a public joint-stock company based in Ukraine. It was established by Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on May 21, 1999, through the transformation of its pre ...

partnered with WebMoney.UA. In May 2018, the

has abolished the registration of the inner-state payment system WebMoney.UA (the subsidiary of 'Financing company ElMI', Kyiv) as it was put on the sanctions list of the

National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC; uk, Рада національної безпеки і оборони України, RNBO or RNBOU) is the coordinating state body of the executive power under the President of Ukrai ...

.National Bank of Ukraine excludes WebMoney from register of inner-state payment systems.
'' 112 Ukraine''. 2018-05-25.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Webmoney Digital currencies Financial services companies established in 1998 Internet properties established in 1998 Payment service providers Privately held companies of Russia Online financial services companies of Russia Companies based in Moscow Payment systems Financial technology companies Mobile payments