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- The opposite consequences: banks will have to return digital rubles when transferring to fraudsters.
The opposite consequences: banks will have to return digital rubles when transferring to fraudsters.
Banks will have to return digital rubles when transferring money to fraudsters. This will happen if a payment is made in favor of an attacker from the Central Bank's list, just as it currently works with non-cash transfers. People will be attracted by the security of the third form of the national currency, but scammers will also use social engineering so that the person himself sends money to the criminal, experts say. Digital rubles are planned to be massively introduced in 2026. How effective the tool will be in practice is described in the Izvestia article.
In which cases will banks refund money to Russians
Russian banks will have to compensate their customers if they transfer funds in digital rubles to fraudsters from the Central Bank's blacklist. Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on the Financial market, told Izvestia about this.
Today, a similar practice is already in place to refund money to Russians with non-cash transfers. In July 2024, a law came into force obliging banks to monitor their customers' transactions more closely to combat fraud. If a person has tried to send money to the account of intruders, which is listed in the database of the Central Bank, the credit institution is obliged to suspend it and inform the citizen about it. Otherwise, the bank must fully refund the lost amount to the defrauded customer within 30 days.
Izvestia asked major banks how much money they have returned to customers since July last year on this demand.
According to the Central Bank, in the second quarter of this year, fraudsters stole a total of 6.3 billion rubles from Russians. This is 1.5 billion more than in the same period of 2024. At the same time, the share of refunds for the same period in 2025 was only 5%, according to the regulator.
The practice of refunding money is still poorly developed, as there are not enough precedents, said independent expert Andrei Barkhota. However, in the case of the digital ruble, this percentage could potentially be higher, since transfers will be easier to track, said Vladimir Chernov, analyst at Freedom Finance Global.
The digital ruble is a new form of national currency. Its issuer will be the Bank of Russia. Digital rubles are exchanged for cash and non-cash in a 1:1 ratio. They will not be in an individual's bank account, but in a wallet on the Central Bank's platform. The mass launch of the digital ruble was supposed to begin on July 1, 2025, but the regulator postponed it to next year.
The State Duma adopted a law on the mass introduction of the digital ruble from September 1, 2026. The new form of the Russian currency is planned to be introduced into circulation in stages, the Central Bank noted. Starting in the fall of 2026, the largest banks and companies will provide customers with the opportunity to open digital wallets, make transfers, and pay for goods and services. Further, from September 1, 2027, all banks with a universal license and companies with annual revenue of more than 30 million rubles will be connected to the system, and from September 1, 2028, all other banks and sellers must provide access to digital rubles.
The system has been actively tested this year and last year. Banks have already tried opening and closing accounts in digital rubles, transfers between individuals in the third form of national currency, and payments using QR codes. Real operations with the digital ruble have already been tested in 30 trading and service companies in 11 cities, 13 banks and hundreds of Russians took part in the pilot, the Central Bank reported.
According to experts, the introduction of the digital ruble in the early years may lead to an outflow of deposits from banks of up to 20%, as Russians will prefer the new form of money due to security and free transfers. At the same time, according to the National Rating Agency (NRA), by 2031, the new form of money will be able to bring annual benefits to the Russian economy of up to 260 billion rubles.
Izvestia contacted the Bank of Russia with a question about when the refund of money with a digital ruble by banks will begin. The mechanism for countering suspicious transactions with the third form of the national currency should be the same as it is now with non-cash transactions, according to the materials of the Central Bank.
Will scammers be able to steal digital rubles
Fraudsters adapt very quickly to new technologies, Vladimir Chernov noted. According to him, the digital ruble will not be an exception, and as soon as its mass use begins, attackers will try to adapt through social engineering, interface forgery, and user manipulation.
"The main focus will not be on hacking technology, but on psychological pressure, for example, calls allegedly from bank employees, fake applications or links, transfers to a secure account," the analyst admitted.
While the digital ruble is only being tested, fraudsters are already using several schemes for their work with a new form of national currency, said Meri Valishvili, associate professor of the Department of State and Municipal Finance at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. For example, despite the fact that the digital ruble has not even been launched into mass circulation yet, the attackers offer to exchange ordinary money for digital money at a favorable rate, apply the legend of the mandatory transfer of savings in a bank account into digital rubles, as well as the purchase of goods using fake tokens.
The new scheme may also assume that a fraudster will call the victim under the guise of an employee of the Federal Tax Service or a bailiff and report alleged tax evasion, offering to pay the fine only in digital rubles or QR, Andrei Barkhota added.
At the same time, it will be easier to control operations with the digital ruble, said deputy Anatoly Aksakov. The experts interviewed by Izvestia also agreed with this. The new form of the national currency is initially built as a fully controlled instrument, where all transactions are recorded, explained Vladimir Chernov. According to him, real-time monitoring will make it easier to detect fraudulent transfers compared to classic bank accounts.
Although it will not be difficult to track down an illegal transfer of a digital ruble, it will still be a difficult task to recover money from scammers, Alexey Lukatsky, a business consultant on information security at Positive Technologies, warned. In his opinion, the person will most likely have to wait for months or even years for the court to decide the case in his favor.
At the same time, the mechanism for refunding money by the banks themselves, if they approved the transfer in digital rubles to fraudsters, is likely to work approximately by 2027-2028, concluded Vladimir Chernov. According to him, it will take most of the time to create a base for a new form of money.
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