Bank of Russia payment system: participants, organization and functioning

Today in our country there are several payment systems. However, the CBR system today plays the most important and even key role in the entire banking system. It constitutes the institutional basis of the entire Russian national payment system.

Concept

The Bank of Russia Payment System (PSBR) is a complex organizational and technological system. It performs a number of tasks that are aimed at achieving the goals of the Bank of Russia in accordance with the legislation of the country. According to the regulation on the payment system of the Bank of Russia, it should be understood as a community of rules, contractual relationships, methodologies that allows all participants to carry out transactions with each other according to the scheme established by law.

It provides a wide range of services to credit institutions and public authorities. PSBR has the least risk in the national PSBR. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation acts as the main stabilizing element of the entire infrastructure. In recent years, the development of the PSBR has been characterized by the expansion of the range of liquidity management services through interaction with organized markets.

The legal framework for regulating the system includes:

• Civil Code of the Russian Federation;
• Federal Law "On the Central Bank";
• Federal Law "On Banks and Banking";
• rules for banks;
• banking agreements on correspondent accounts.

The Central Bank of Russia payment system is the main element by which the monetary policy in the country is implemented. Significant in number and volume of payment transactions pass through it.

Current state

The main and important component of the state payment system of the Russian Federation is the payment system of the Central Bank. It serves as the central channel for the implementation of the fiscal policy of the country.

The validity of such conclusions is confirmed by the following data. For example, in 2018, credit organizations-operators transferred 513,173.2 billion rubles. At the same time, in the framework of the PSBR - about 1,340,034.2 billion rubles. Therefore, it can be argued that within the framework of its system, the Bank of Russia transferred funds, the volume of which is 2.5 times higher than the volumes transferred through credit organizations that are operators on the market.

Federal Law No. 86-FZ “On the Central Bank of Russia” establishes that, together with the objectives of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, such as the stability of the ruble, the main goal is the continuous functioning of the entire system as a whole. At the same time, a clear and constantly functioning payment system maintains the stability of the ruble by using it as a means of payment, and also helps to strengthen the credit and financial sector of Russia through interbank operations and settlements.

The goals of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, its functions and capabilities define the system itself as one of the main options for implementing the financial policy of Russia, and ensure its leading role. Significant amounts and the prevailing share of payments in Russia pass through the PSBR. The indicated causes define it as systemically significant in Russia.

The Central Bank of the Russian Federation regulates, keeps under control its payment system, and also fulfills its obligations to other participants.

The Central Bank of the Russian Federation takes measures to develop its own system with respect to increasing its productivity and ensuring continuous operation. Such development is aimed at increasing its efficiency by lowering costs, increasing the quality of services provided, increasing the productivity of both payments and requests and control actions, as well as lowering financial risk, insolvency risk, operational risk, systemic and legislative dangers.

The functioning of the system itself is regulated by the Regulation “On the Payment System of the Bank of Russia”, which defines the main aspects of the bank’s importance, suspension rules, the procedure for introducing clearing and settlements.

The payment system of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation has settlement systems and mechanisms that differ in territorial scope and size of payments made, rules and procedures, the composition of participants and settlement documents, the speed of payments and the technologies used.

System tasks

Among the main tasks facing the payment system, we can distinguish:

• uninterrupted, efficient and safe functioning;
• reliability and durability, which should guarantee the absence of interruptions in work;
• efficiency for output workflow;
• justice in approach.

The table below summarizes the PSBR data for 2018.

Functions

The main function of the system can be called ensuring the dynamics and stability of speed. With an effective system, quality control of the monetary sphere is also possible, helping credit institutions to actively maintain their liquidity, thereby reducing the need for large excess reserves.

The payment system guarantees:

• Funds are credited to customer funds on the day of receipt. In some regions, these funds are debited and credited in a mode close to the present time regime, with the possibility of their immediate use.
• The ability to manage solvency by providing financial institutions with intraday bail loans.
• Implementation of financial policy measures through servicing credit, deposit, cash and other operations.
• Settlements in the financial market.

With regard to information security, the system provides for: identification, integrity control and proof of payment documents, separation of access rights and protection against inconsistent access to resources of the payment processing system, control over settlement operations, secrecy (cryptographic protection) of payment information, backup of hardware and software complexes and information resources.

Main elements

The table describes the main elements of the system.

All elements are closely interconnected with each other. Interaction is carried out in accordance with established rules, which are enshrined in regulatory documents and international agreements. All system work is based on special legal acts and the rules of its functioning.

The Bank of Russia payment system includes:

• urgent electronic payments online;
• more than seventy special electronic payment systems within regions that operate on a continuous basis;
• electronic payments of the Moscow region, which operates continuously;
• the totality of electronic payments between different regions of the country, allowing to transfer funds between regions of the Russian Federation within 1-2 days;
• payment systems using payment terminals;
• a number of specialized calculating devices for some regions of the Russian Federation and units of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.

In general, the PSBR system itself consists of several subsystems, which is reflected in the table below.

Main participants

Among the participants in the payment system of the Bank of Russia are:

• Central Bank of the Russian Federation represented by its own divisions.
• Financial institutions and banks in the national payment system of Russia
• Federal Treasury.
• The remaining customers of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, which are not financial institutions (branches).

The competence of the Central Bank include risk management and liquidity risk control. He also regulates its participants, acts as the main operator of the system.

The essence of the risk management of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation is as follows:

• the application of preventive measures to banks that are in financial difficulty;
• monitoring the activities of credit institutions in the field of settlement activities;
• development of legal norms that provide regulation of settlements;
• creation and implementation of channel protection forms.

Bank accounts for those who participate in the system and are a client of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation are opened in its divisions.

The payment system provides for mandatory participation. A prerequisite for the role is the opening of a correspondent account with the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. The order of suspension of a role in the payment system is not used. The participation of the institution is terminated after the termination of the account contract or for the financial company from the moment the banking license is withdrawn from the financial company. Identification is performed in several directories:

• reference book of the BIC of the Russian Federation (for structural units of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, financial institutions and their units);
• reference book of BESP system participants;
• local directories that are used in each local branch of the payment system of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation (for all customers, including those who are not financial institutions).

The directories use unique Russian identification codes. Account numbers in customer banks are formed in accordance with the accounting rules of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and financial institutions.

The Central Bank of the Russian Federation, being the operator of payment infrastructure services and the operator of money transfers, transfers funds through accounts in banks participating in the payment system of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, which are its customers.

The Central Bank of the Russian Federation provides the following services to participants of the payment system:

• operational services;
• payment of clearing services;
• settlement services.

PSBR works every day, except weekends and non-working days off, which were established by the regulatory legal acts of Russia.

The criteria for participation in the system are as follows:

• acts as a client of a credit organization - direct participant;
• access to the money transfer service using orders in electronic form is provided;
• the organization as a client of the Bank of the Russian Federation is not registered.

It turns out that the indirect nature of participation is expressed in the fact that organizations themselves cannot conclude agreements with the Bank of Russia, but only through a direct participant:

• in a situation where credit organizations have a correspondent account with the Bank of the Russian Federation;
• in a situation where a direct participant ceases to participate in the system, then his clients too.

The main systems of settlements between banks

There are a number of parallel operating interbank settlement systems in the Russian Federation, which are presented in the table below.

The payment system of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation is centralized, and the rest are decentralized.

Operation basics

In the PSBR, there are calculations that are different from each other in terms of the composition of the participants, the territories of coverage, the time period, the basics of implementation, and the technologies.

Below we consider the existing settlement systems and their characteristics.

Specific features of the BESP system in the framework of the development of the Bank of Russia payment system:

• works within the entire system of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation;
• the availability of only urgent transfers;
• translation is carried out only on the basis of electronic type orders;
• accept electronic tools online.

Payments using electronic technologies occupy almost 99% of the total number of transactions.

When implementing the settlement system in PSBR using electronic technologies, documents can be generated in the form of electronic messages. The format of such messages was developed by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. They are sent using the Bank of Russia transport system.

The Bank of Russia payment system organization operates through collective information processing, which includes high-availability processing centers, as well as an electronic payment transport system.

Tariff Policy

This policy is based on the principles of tariff differentiation from the typology of payments. It is aimed at increasing the interest of participants in all calculations in the application of modern technologies, ensuring cost recovery. The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and Regional Economic Development anticipate an increase in the cost of services by the end of the day for the purpose of evenly distributing the load on all automated complexes. In the BESP system, tariffs can be set depending on the forms of participation in connection with a different level of service, as well as the type of payment, the priority of its behavior. The tariff policy does not apply to electronic messaging services provided by the CBR to users. Tariffs themselves are approved by the decision of the Board of Directors of the Bank.

The main objectives of the tariff policy in the settlement system in the payment system of the Bank of Russia are:

• creating conditions for optimizing work with the clientele of PSBR services and liquidity management;
• Reduced operating costs due to uneven loading
• covering (partial) operating expenses for the functioning of the system while maintaining its attractiveness.

Risk management basics

In accordance with the Federal Law of June 27, 2011 No. 161 “On the National Payment System of the Bank of Russia”, the Bank of Russia has created a special committee to carry out these risk management processes in order to coordinate risk assessment processes. His responsibility is to create conditions for risk assessment and management in the PSBR, as well as conduct this assessment, prepare recommendations to minimize the identified negative aspects.

Conclusion

The payment system of the Central Bank of Russia is considered to be the largest in terms of the volume and number of operations and payments processed. At the same time, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation occupies a major place in it, since it is both a participant and an operator of the entire system, it performs the functions of coordination and regulation of settlement relations. He also carries out monitoring analyzes of private systems, establishes the principles of their functioning, basic rules and standards. The payment system of Russia and the banks of the Russian Federation closely interact with each other.