Several months ago the Bank of Russia said it was planning to delay the rollout of its digital ruble central bank digital currency (CBDC) following pushback from both banks and retailers. The first phase was originally scheduled to launch on 1 July 2025, with the central bank now proposing 1 September 2026, although it requires a change to the law.
That’s a compromise given the largest retailers requested an extension of up to two years. The first rollout date applies to the biggest banks and retailers. But the categorization of the largest retailers has been narrowed to those with revenues of more than 120 million rubles ($1.5m), compared to 30 million ($380,000) under the previous plan.
The next tier of banks and merchants get an extra year to launch, and includes banks with a universal license and traders with more than 30 million rubles in revenues. For the smaller ones, the launch deadline is 1 September 2028. However, it seems that small merchants with revenues of under 5 million are no longer compelled to accept the CBDC.
While requests for the delay were widespread, Russia’s largest bank Sber was one of the loudest. That’s in part because it was not included in the first phase of the CBDC trials, so only joined in late December 2024, which would not have given it enough lead time if the launch had rolled out next month as planned.
In the announcement, the central bank also emphasized that at checkout the digital ruble will use its universal QR code, which already supports its faster payment system. Late last year the bank said it had piloted the universal QR with 22 banks.
