(openPR) - Ensuring a possibility of acceptance of small amounts of money, the Russian leading payment system, CyberPlat®, performs an important social task—makes modern high technologies more affordable even for the most low-income groups of population.

The functional capabilities of the electronic payment system facilitate acceptance of most insignificant amounts of money, which is an important and even simply essential factor for the low-budget cellular communications consumers.

According to the CyberPlat® payment system’s statistical data, only 20% of transactions performed through the CyberPlat® payment system exceed 5 US dollars. At that, payments of less than $1 constitute a 14% share of all payments, those from $1 to $2 comprise 34 %, from $2 to $3 – 2%, and $3 to $5 – 30%. Hence, half of all CyberPlat®’s transactions consists of payments of less than $3, which is equivalent to 80–90 rubles.
By the present moment, due to the operation of the CyberPlat® payment system, which performs over 70 million transactions per month, the widest groups of Russia’s population have obtained an opportunity to take advantage of mobile communications and the Internet. It is the presence of payment acceptance point chains in numerous regions that made mobile communications and the Internet accessible. Russian citizens know that it is possible to pay for the mobile telecommunications services practically everywhere — whether it is a communication salon, shop, pharmacy, post office, self-service terminal, supermarket or filling station; and practically instantaneously the subscriber’s account will be topped up.
The wide cash payment acceptance network of the CyberPlat® system deployed in retail outlets facilitated the acceptance of very small amounts (beginning from 10 rubles). It is this particular specificity that predetermined the competitive advantage of cash payment systems over scratch cards. The minimum amount for personal account replenishing by means of a scratch card cannot be smaller than 5 US dollars, which approximately equals 140 rubles. Thus, the payment acceptance through the CyberPlat® system can be performed with any amount, which is principally impossible to implement using a scratch card as a payment medium.
As a result, mobile communications have become more affordable for the middle and low-income populations, particularly: pensioners, students and children (since even a minimum amount allows a subscriber to keep connected, send messages and make urgent calls to family members, the rescue service, etc.) Thus, due to the CyberPlat® payment system, an infrastructure for using modern telecommunication technologies has been created and is successfully functioning among the widest groups of population.
“Due to the acceptance of even the smallest amounts for account reloading, our payment system provides additional, and, in its own way, socially significant services to mobile phone users, especially to subscribers with the middle and low incomes,” Andrew Gribov, General Director of CyberPlat®, comments. “Since several dozen rubles on a subscriber’s account allow using all basic mobile telecommunications services.”
The development of the infrastructure for payment acceptance via the CyberPlat® payment system promotes the use of mobile communication services by the prevalent majority of the country’s population, and tells positively on the development of the whole Russian telecommunications industry. The CyberPlat® payment system performs a most important social task – facilitates the availability of safety communication exclusively important for Russia’s low-income citizens.

IGOR KOLOSOV
PR

JSC CYBERPLAT.COM
4 Gerasima Kurina, Corp. 3, Premises 1,
Moscow 121108
Tel.: 007 495 967 02 00 ext. 055, Fax: 007 495 967 06 00; e-mail: kolosov@platina.ru

The CyberPlat® System was created as an internal division of Platina Bank in 1997.

August 1998 became a landmark in Russia's electronic commerce - the CyberPlat® system had conducted the first top-up transaction to refill a cellular communication subscriber account. The first cellular communication operator was OJSC Vimpel-Communications (BeeLine trade mark).

Intensive development of the electronic commerce market led to the change in organizational and commercial approaches to the development of the CyberPlat® system: in the year 2000, there was created OJSC "CYBERPLAT.COM" with headquarter in Moscow.

At present, OJSC CYBERPLAT.COM is one of the leading Russian Internet companies providing infrastructural services for electronic commerce, focused on payment processing and closed document circulation in real-time mode.

The Company's product is a broad-based integrated multi-banking payment system –CyberPlat® – which has been used for over 8 years as a standard element of Internet shopping by a number of leading software developers, as well as an Internet payment tool.