Russians will test the payment of parking in digital rubles

VTB is testing the technology of smart contracts with payment in digital rubles at smart parking lots in St. Petersburg. The presentation of the project took place at FINOPOLIS-2025. This was reported to Izvestia on October 11 by the VTB press service.

In the future, the bank's customers will be able to use the application to create smart contracts with the third form of the ruble - automated transactions that will be triggered upon the occurrence of various conditions. For example, when a car arrives at a parking lot, the system automatically counts the number of the car and starts calculating the time of use at the current rate, which may vary depending on the length of stay, time of day, or site occupancy. When the car leaves the parking lot, the contract will be automatically executed and the required amount in digital rubles will be debited from the user.

"Smart contracts are already a familiar routine for businesses, but they can significantly save time and eliminate unnecessary hassle for each of us, reducing time for everyday tasks. And in combination with the technology of the digital ruble, everything becomes even simpler and more transparent. The parking example shows that the customer no longer needs to search for a parking meter and stand in line for it, install an application, save a parking ticket or scan receipts at the check-out. After leaving the parking lot, the smart contract allows you to automatically calculate and deduct the fee, taking into account time and other conditions - without terminals, cards and applications, and even if the subscriber is offline. In addition, the smart contract is serial: it will remember this parking lot and activate on the next visit," added Alexey Okhorzin, Senior Vice President and Head of VTB's Retail Business products Department.

It is noted that St. Petersburg is a megalopolis with very active car traffic and dynamically growing digital services for citizens. Conducting a pilot project in digital rubles to pay for parking in the Northern Capital, on the one hand, will allow the bank to get the most complete picture of a potential payment scenario, and on the other, to stimulate further development of urban digital services.

"Smart contracts in digital rubles not only allow you to make automatic payments, they allow you to take into account a combination of different conditions at a certain point in time. This is a fundamentally new customer experience. VTB is actively testing operations in digital rubles, conducting pilot payments in various scenarios. According to these pilots, we see that making payments in smart contracts using digital rubles is one of the most anticipated scenarios for users using the digital ruble," said Elena Chetverikova, Senior Vice President and Deputy Head of VTB's Operational Business Support Department.

On October 3, Sultan Zhankaziev, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor at Moscow Automobile and Road State Technical University (MADI), spoke about the advantages of new paid parking in Moscow. In an interview with Izvestia, he drew attention to the fact that regulated charging in paid parking allows you to provide the necessary number of available parking spaces by reducing the search time. This practice has been successfully applied for a long time in the world, including in the Russian capital.

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