Yandex.Money to Change Leadership

Internet, March 14, 2014. Yandex.Money has announced a change to its top executive. Starting 18 March, Maria Gracheva will be taking over the management of the company. The current CEO, Jane Zavalishina, will remain on Yandex.Money’s board of directors.

"Maria Gracheva joined Yandex.Money more than seven years ago. She knows all the subtleties of the job and, most recently, has been responsible for the company's business development. That's why she was an obvious choice for the position," says Arkady Volozh, CEO of Yandex and member of Yandex.Money's board of directors. "Jane Zavalishina is going to be returning to Yandex to focus on a new international project related to Big Data. The transition was planned well in advance and will not disrupt the operations at Yandex.Money."

Maria Gracheva first joined the Yandex.Money team in 2006 as the Director of Marketing. Since 2011 she has been responsible for the expansion of Yandex.Money's services in and outside of Russia. Maria has been the architect of a whole series of new products, andin particular, she came up with the idea of creating the Yandex.Money bank card. She also helped develop the services that allow users to add money to their e-wallets directly from their bank cards and withdraw Yandex.Money to bank cards. Before coming to work with Yandex.Money, Maria headed her own advertising agency, Breakthrough, for ten years.

Yandex.Money is the largest electronic payment service in Russia, offering easy, safe, and reliable methods of paying for goods and services online. By the end of 2013, the service had over 16 million accounts with more than 10,000 new accounts added daily. Currently, Yandex.Money is accepted by more than 50,000 online and offline stores. The company was founded in 2002 as Yandex’s subsidiary. As of today, Yandex owns a 25% share (plus one ruble) in Yandex.Money’s capital, while a 75% share (minus one ruble) belongs to Sberbank of Russia.

Contact:
Media Relations
Vladimir Isaev, Ochir Mandzhikov
Phone: +7 495 739-7000
E-mail: pr@yandex-team.com