Robokassa decided to sell the business

The owners of the payment aggregator Robokassa have decided to sell the business, Kommersant learned. According to the publication, it has become harder for such services to make money after the Central Bank’s close attention to gray transactions in the gambling sector.

The owners of Robokassa are looking for a buyer for their business – the company has already approached a number of large Russian banks with this offer. Among them, according to Kommersant, are VTB, Alfa-Bank, Tinkoff Bank and MTS Bank, but the circle may be significantly wider. The newspaper writes that Sovcombank conducted due diligence on a certain payment processor (the company name was not disclosed), and in November Promsvyazbank, which serves the defense sector, filed an application for a comprehensive review of one of the businesses.

The Robokassa service allows companies connected to its platform to accept payments in various ways and acts as a banking payment agent. For the most part the aggregator works with small businesses. According to the company’s most recent annual report (for 2020), its revenue exceeds 1 billion rubles. The company’s founder is the British entity Paysend Group Limited, but the real beneficiaries of the company are the Abdulkerimov family, already known in the financial market. Abdulzhelil Abdulkerimov previously owned Russlavbank, whose license was revoked by the Central Bank in 2015 due to conducting “questionable transit operations in large volumes”.

Sources speaking to Kommersant note that the owners decided to sell Robokassa because of the Central Bank, which in recent years has been intensively fighting illegal payments to online casinos. Due to the regulator’s tightening policies the earnings of payment aggregators have fallen sharply: as one source told the newspaper, the gambling market used to allow such services to earn up to 15% on acquiring fees. At the same time, in the legal payment market aggregators find it difficult to compete with large Russian banks, which are now present in all segments, another interlocutor added.