{"id":304148,"date":"2025-11-24T17:19:03","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T17:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/304148\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T17:19:03","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T17:19:03","slug":"russia-sees-surge-in-cash-circulation-amid-internet-outages-and-tighter-bank-scrutiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/304148\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia Sees Surge in Cash Circulation Amid Internet Outages and Tighter Bank Scrutiny"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia saw a sharp increase in cash circulating in the economy between July and September, with the volume of banknotes in use increasing by 659 billion rubles ($8.4 billion), the pro-Kremlin daily Izvestia reported<\/a>\u00a0Monday, citing Central Bank data.<\/p>\n

The jump is more than five times larger than during the same period in 2024, when cash in circulation grew by 137 billion rubles ($1.7 billion).<\/p>\n

A bigger surge of around 1.1 trillion rubles ($14 billion) was last recorded during the first year of the full-scale war in Ukraine, a time of heightened economic uncertainty.<\/p>\n

The Central Bank has previously linked<\/a> the trend to more frequent cash withdrawals due to recurring internet outages that began in Moscow in May.<\/p>\n

Shutdowns are now being recorded daily in more than 50 regions,\u00a0the monitoring project Na Svyazi has said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Ulyanovsk region has cut off<\/a> mobile internet entirely until the end of the war.<\/p>\n

Many Russians have taken this as a signal to keep a reserve of cash on hand, Olga Belenkaya, head of macroeconomic analysis at Finam, told Izvestia.<\/p>\n

She added that demand for cash has also been pushed higher by stricter bank scrutiny of suspicious transactions, which has led to widespread card and transfer blocks.<\/p>\n

Concerns about greater attention from tax authorities have also contributed, Valeria Popova, a senior analyst at investment firm Rikom-Trust, told Izvestia.<\/p>\n

The Federal Tax Service has had access to certain banking controls as part of efforts to combat evasion of personal income and self-employment taxes since July 1.<\/p>\n

The agency can now review individual accounts in cases involving questionable transfers or discrepancies between reported income and account balances.<\/p>\n

For now, cashless payments still account for about 87% of transactions.<\/p>\n

That share had been rising thanks to digitalization, the expansion of the fast-payments system, bank bonus programs and cashback offers, as well as high deposit rates that made keeping money in banks more attractive, Belenkaya said.<\/p>\n

Still, the banking sector has already experienced an outflow of funds of around 200 billion rubles ($2.54 billion) in the first half of the year, according to the Central Bank.<\/p>\n

Rikom-Trust analysts quoted by Izvestia warned that heavier reliance on cash can make financial oversight more difficult and create openings for tax evasion and growth of the shadow economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia saw a sharp increase in cash circulating in the economy between July and September, with the volume…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,10082,46,244],"class_list":{"0":"post-304148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-central-bank","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-internet"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}