Russia’s largest bank to start offering customers CBDC in 2025

A senior executive at Russia’s largest lender Sberbank said the bank aims to offer digital ruble transactions to its customers by early 2025.

Russia’s banking giant Sberbank plans to roll out the country’s central bank digital currency, the digital ruble, to its customers in early 2025. Sberbank’s Deputy General Director Anatoly Popov told Reuters:

Sberbank is among the Russian banks expected to join the project in the second round of testing the CBDC, along with about 20 other financial institutions. Speaking about the actual use, Popov said that the bank plans to start “real operations” [with the digital ruble] “We aim to meet with customers in early 2025.”

The Bank of Russia, which developed a digital ruble prototype in December 2021, began testing it in 2022. As of August 2023, clients and employees of 13 Russian banks participated in the pilot operations. The central bank expanded the pilot to 9,000 people and 1,200 companies in early September 2024, up from about 600 people and 22 companies.

In late July, Russia’s central bank said the digital ruble could be available for wider use by July 2025. The central bank reassured that the digital ruble would complement, rather than replace, existing cash and non-cash rubles. China, a major reference for Russia’s digital currency initiatives, has begun paying government salaries in Changshu with its own CBDC, the digital yuan, to boost adoption of the state-controlled currency.