The Bank of Russia plans to begin an experiment with the collection of coins in the population using special automata. It is reported by “Russian Gazeta”.
Commissions for the reception of coins will not, or it will be minimal. The pilot launch of the project will be held in 2022 in one of the regions with a low proportion of the coin refund. The Central Bank also told that due to the lack of necessary equipment for the implementation of the experiment, the regulator will attract a technological partner. In the future, it is planned to expand the use of devices.
According to the publication, in 2020, the Bank of Russia issued more than 1.3 billion coins – nine for each inhabitant of the country. It cost the regulator of 3.8 billion rubles. During a pandemic, the percentage of coins returned to the box office decreased to 46, in 2019 this figure was 63 percent. In the “main directions of cash circulation”, the Central Bank states that trading enterprises are increasingly refusing to accept a coin from the population to reduce the cost of recalculation and collection.
To return the coins into the turnover, the regulator is currently offering to carry out the share of the “Coin Day” and participate on the mint, which redirects coins from organizations receiving them from the population, in organizations that need them.
VTB representatives suggested that the development of a project with coin apparatus depends on how the process is profitable for banks, and the cost is adequate to customers. In Promsvyazbank, in turn, noted that coin exchange operations are not claimed among citizens due to their weight and low nominal value.
In August 2020, it was reported that the Russians began to pay less detail less. According to the end of 2019, there were 67.8 billion coins in circulation, and already in 2020 their number increased by another 362 million pieces, reaching 68.2 billion. In the central bank, they explained that they were forced to produce a coin every year, because part of it settles in piggy banks or is lost.