The Kommersant publication, citing interviewed financial experts, reported that small and medium-sized Russian banks do not have enough funds to start working with the digital ruble and optimize their payment infrastructure for the third form of the national currency.

Analysts surveyed said that the minimum cost of connecting just one bank to the digital ruble platform would be 120-200 million rubles or even more. Such costs are prohibitive for small and medium-sized banking institutions, as they are many times higher than their annual budgets for information infrastructure, experts noted.

According to the head of Uniteller Niyaz Sharipov, banks will have to invest not only in adapting existing internal systems to the digital ruble platform, but also train staff, as well as ensure information security at a higher level, which will require additional costs.

Alexey Voylukov, professor of MBA business practice in digital finance at RANEPA, shares a similar point of view. According to him, for banks with a basic license, expenses of 100-200 million rubles will be unaffordable, since their annual budget for the entire IT infrastructure is about 20 million rubles. If they are required to pay an amount five to ten times more, they will be able to close their business. Even most medium-sized banks will suffer losses, since they may have very few clients working with the digital ruble, the expert said.

Analysts believe that in the future the threshold for entry into the digital ruble platform may be lowered after more players and offers appear on the market, and only then small and medium-sized banks will be able to start working with the digital ruble.

Earlier, First Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Russia Olga Skorobogatova said that the regulator plans to connect another 14-15 banks to the digital ruble pilot by July 1, 2025.