Russian Internet Portal Proposes Electronic Wallet for Every User

Russia’s Yandex internet portal has proposed giving every registered user the opportunity to gain an electronic wallet.

The previuos system required the downloading and installation of a special program to make use of the electronic wallet at money.yandex.ru. As of Thursday, every Internet user who has a login at Yandex.Ru will receive a wallet and see his account at any portal page. This means users can access their account from any computer and with any browser without any special program.

“Now, using electronic payments is as simple as using mail and search,” the company’s director general, Arkady Volozh, told MosNews. “We have made a system not only for Internet pros but for their bosses, secretaries, children and parents as well.”

The Money.Yandex.Ru service was started in summer 2002 as a joint project with Yandex and PayCash that provides the technology for electronic payments via the Internet. Now it is the biggest system of electronic payments in the ruble Internet zone. The monthly turnover of the system reached 300 million rubles in August 2005, the number of money operations per day has risen to 50,000.

Over 1,000 sellers of goods and services are linked to Money.Yandex.Ru. One can pay for phone, Internet, TV, program software, computer services, and insurance as well as transfer money to other registered users.

Yandex is the largest portal on the Russian Internet today, which offers its users key Internet services. According to research studies conducted by Gallup Media, FOM and Comcon, Yandex is the largest resource on the Russian Internet, based on the audience size and internet penetration.

Among the services offered by Yandex are a search engine, directory of sites by themes, latest news, free e-mail, a Spam protection system, free web hosting, encyclopedias, dictionaries, a comparison shopping system, weather forecasting and much more. In 2005 the number of the visitors at Yandex pages reached 2.7 million visitors per day and over 17 million a month and continues to grow.

So far, Yandex.Ru has 4.6 million registered users. All of them have received electronic wallets.