Duma introduces bill to ban the use of digital assets as a means of payment

The head of the Financial Market Committee, Anatoly Aksakov, has submitted to the State Duma a законопроект proposing a prohibition on the use of digital financial assets (DFA) and utilitarian digital rights as a means of payment on the territory of Russia.

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Under the document, DFA are prohibited from being accepted or transferred \”as consideration for goods, works, services, or any other means that would imply payment for DFA of goods, works, or services.\”

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Current regulation does not provide for a direct ban on using digital assets as a means of payment.

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The explanatory memorandum accompanying the document states that the ruble is the sole official currency in the Russian Federation and that the ban would remove the risks of using DFA as a monetary surrogate.

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To implement the restrictions, DFA exchange operators will be obliged to refuse transactions where such assets could be used as a means of payment.

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Both DFA-issuing information-system operators and investment platform operators must render impossible for users to enter or modify DFA records when transacting with them.

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The document classifies operators of electronic platforms as subjects of the national payment system; they must be included in the Bank of Russia’s register.

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The DFA law was enacted in 2020 and took effect on 1 January 2021. In May this year, the State Duma endorsed in the first reading a bill on taxing DFA transactions.

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Licenses for DFA-management information-system operators were granted by the Bank of Russia to platforms Atomyze, “Sberbank” and “Lighthouse”.

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