Billing in Russia – what do we have today and what will be tomorrow

We will hardly see the conventional SMS payments by the New Year already. Andrey Rumyantsev, CEO of The Russian Billing

If money in your business must be cash one day it means the financial crisis, including the crisis of liquidity may touch you. The same thing happened to the market of mobile payments this autumn. In order not to overload you, our dear readers, with clever economic phrases, we will simply tell that we have faced the situation when the banks didn’t pay their partners - billing companies due to the shortage of money which became a deficit on the market. As for the billing companies, they failed to pay their clients and as a result have lost them.

The main point of a situation on the market of mobile payments has been stated above, but it was more likely the theoretical calculation which has turned to a reality during the financial crisis storming today. However we witnessed how the theory turns to the practice, and became sure that nobody has cancelled the laws of aggressive business.

The name of a market giant “Russian billing” (RB) is probably familiar to everybody. People know this brand as they remember how comfortable it was for them to work with this billing company. The efforts of RB on reduction the holding terms and the occupied market positions are so impressive that the company’s payment problems have affected the majority of the Internet web designers. So what has happened?

The answer is quite simple: this billing company was renting the numbers from A1company, and was its oldest partner. All the financial operations of RB were carried out through RFI Bank, the bank which is a part of A1holding. And as soon as the bank has started to delay payments, Russian Billing in its turn became insolvent. Anything is ok and such situation could be explained by the crisis but for one fact. The thing is that A1 has its own billing company MP Bill.ru. And according to Andrey Rumjantsev the chairman of the board of directors of RFI BANK is the actual owner of MPBill.ru.

I bet that someone from readers having read this told: “Dog!” And probably you were right. The thing happened is called repartition put it mildly. Here again it is possible to tell only, that the given situation only a fruit of laws of the market. Someone, I think it is easy to guess who, wanted to become an absolute leader, having cut the ground from under feet of Russian Billing. It was a beautiful business-course, a beautiful checkmate in a game which seemed to be won by RB. However, the external factors and a competent course have predetermined the result of the game and finally the users of RB saw the following words on the site of russianbilling.com:

We are very sorry but the project is closed. Information for partners:
1. All the clients of RB, wishing to obtain compensation should registered in А1 Aggregator.
2. At 16.00 Moscow time all root prefixes of the system will be transferred to the platform of А1. Your prefixes will not go to the third parties and you will receive your residual traffic. For this purpose please ask the administrators of the aggregator to return the prefixes you owned in RB.
3. Агрегатор А1 plans to pay all the debts during 2 months if receive money from the operators. Any partner can personally address A1 aggregator to speed up the payment process.
4. Russian Billing will provide the dump bases for the period not paid. The information will be transferred to А1. Thus, you will get the exact amounts of money.
We thank thousands of people who supported the Russian Billing during this difficult period. Our support service will help the clients to finish works with Russian Billing. All the necessary arrangements with А1 Aggregator have been reached and all the partners will receive the funds without fail.

And now let’s thing that will be next

There is no need to be an analyst to understand that the next main billing of the Russian Internet will be MP Bill. Now bank, aggregator and billing have incorporated together and appeared as an omnipotent titan, showing everybody its domination. It is obvious that depending on development of the liquidity crisis the market of mobile payments can be shaken against and not once. Due to those shake-ups lots of the billing companies can end their way in a blind alley. The company that overcomes all those difficulties will be remembered by the thousands of people as a leader of the mobile payment market

However, there is one more formation into which the market of billing can evolve. Potential of the mobile operators, and also perspective decrease in the cost of billing services may one day create a situation when the day will be ruled by the mobile operators, or it’s better to say by a Big Three. Today the mobile operator is just an agent, and they are satisfied yet. However, even today we can see the attempts to change the status in business and to occupy the better position. Today we can see the active promotion of OJSC "Vympelcom" (Beeline) in the segments uncharacteristic to it, and the main one was the Internet market of Moscow. Here necessary to say that it is a natural process which explains only the natural ambitions of some large companies to occupy as many market sectors as possible. And nobody can guarantee today that already tomorrow these Big Three will have no wish to change the management of the billing industry. For this purpose the Big Three needs to open only the bank and to create/buy the aggregator. Is it difficult to do? As easy as ABC! Just think about it …

As a conclusion we may say that the tomorrow of billing in Russia is difficult to predict. Certainly, one can draw out some prospects however the Russian realities, external and internal economic forces can change the development dynamics radically. Certainly, we create our history ourselves, but we should be ready to the situation when today’s market leader becomes the tomorrow’s outsider…

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