Cashless and cardless payments or shifts in consumer preferences: Bank of Russia statistics
People tend to use QR codes, e-wallets, biometric data, and other services to make payments and transfer funds without cards increasingly more often. In January—March 2025, the number of such transactions increased by around one third year on year and approached 11 billion, as evidenced by the Bank of Russia’s data.
In 2025 Q1, payments made using QR codes or biometric data totalled about 800 million, which was almost twice as many as over the same period in 2024. The amount of purchases made using these methods exceeded ₽1.1 trillion (+₽389 billion).
Still, bank cards remain the main payment instrument, though the number of transactions made with them has been declining for two consecutive quarters. Overall, 14.9 billion (+0.1 billion) card transactions worth ₽13.6 trillion (-₽0.2 trillion) were made to pay for goods and services between January and March 2025.
To meet customer demand for various payment instruments, banks continued to develop their payment infrastructure. In 2025 Q1, the number of POS terminals increased by almost 10% year on year and totalled 4.9 million.