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The average fee for transferring $200 abroad is about 6.4% of the amount, while through a bank this figure reaches almost 15%. At the same time, the payment message itself reaches the recipient bank within ten minutes. This statistic is cited by digital economist Ravil Akhtyamov, emphasizing that the main costs and time delays arise not at the data transmission stage, but after.

The key problem is the "last mile": compliance checks, reconciliation, and crediting of funds at the local bank. Over one month, five different methods were attempted to close this gap, and all of them come down to one question — who controls the settlement balance.

The essence of the dispute: not technology, but responsibility

Last week, on August 4, the President of Russia signed the law "On Digital Currency and Digital Rights." Three weeks before that, the United States legislatively banned its own digital dollar, Europe entered final negotiations on the digital euro, the Bank for International Settlements conducted its first settlement with real money in the Agorá project, and Mastercard closed the acquisition of a company specializing in stablecoin settlements.

All five events answer one question, but the Russian answer differs: only here does the state build two payment circuits simultaneously and regulate them differently. Domestically — only a public circuit, externally — only a private one. The dispute is not about message transmission speed: according to SWIFT statistics, three out of four payments reach the recipient bank within ten minutes. Time and money are consumed precisely by the "last mile" — compliance, reconciliation, and crediting at the local bank.

The real subject of the dispute is whose obligation you hold in your hands at the moment of settlement: the central bank's, a commercial bank's, a private issuer company's, or a payment network's. This determines who you turn to if a payment goes missing, and who benefits from the funds while they sit in the system. This balance is the raw material of the banking economy: it is what they earn on, what loans are issued from, and what clients are retained for.

What the Russian law introduces

The law takes effect on September 1, 2026, mandatory registration of crypto exchangers in the Bank of Russia registry — from July 1, 2027, and part of the requirements for intermediaries — from September 2027. A new category of professional participants emerges — digital depositories: they maintain records of clients' crypto assets, hold primary and backup IT infrastructure in Russia, and compensate for damages in case of unauthorized debits. Crypto exchangers with own funds of at least 15 million rubles are legalized.

The criteria for admitting assets to trading are enshrined in the law itself: market capitalization above 5 trillion rubles, average daily turnover above 1 trillion, and a trading history of at least five years. Today, bitcoin and ether fall under these criteria. For non-qualified investors, a limit of 300 thousand rubles per year with one intermediary and mandatory testing are established.

The provision that will affect practice earlier than others is settlements under foreign trade contracts. It has been in effect since September 2024 in an experimental mode of the Bank of Russia, and the new law gives it permanent status. Domestic payments in cryptocurrency remain prohibited. Not only custodial wallets are allowed, but also self-custodial ones; when withdrawing over 100 thousand rubles to an external address, a 48-hour delay is provided — it will take effect on September 1, 2027.

The Central Bank's list itself does not prohibit owning assets outside it: the criteria apply to public offerings through Russian intermediaries, not to property rights. Digital currency is recognized as property with judicial protection. Foreign and non-custodial wallets are not prohibited; the owner is recognized as the one holding the access key. The obligation to declare the very fact of ownership is not directly established — except for civil servants. Two or more transactions per month exceeding 3.5 million rubles are considered by the law as a sign of organized activity requiring intermediary status.

Tax arises upon sale, not upon holding: 13% on income up to 2.4 million rubles and 15% above that, with a 3-NDFL declaration due by April 30. The holding-period exemption applicable to certain types of property does not apply to digital currency. From July 1, 2027, banks are obliged to refuse transfers to unlicensed crypto services — the channel for funding foreign platforms through Russian banks is closed.

Two circuits instead of one

Domestically, from September 1, mandatory acceptance of the digital ruble begins — the state retail currency that the United States has legislatively rejected until the end of 2030 and that Europe is only designing so far. Externally, the circulation of private global assets is legalized. Both instruments are used simultaneously but separated by purpose: domestically — only the public circuit, externally — only the private one.

The logic of separation is simple if you look at obligations. Domestically, the balance remains with the Bank of Russia: this provides traceability of settlements and independence from external infrastructure — and simultaneously raises the same privacy question that led the United States to abandon the retail model. Externally, an asset is used that is not issued by any party to the transaction — which is why it works where correspondent channels have become difficult to navigate due to external restrictions in recent years. The sanctions context is not named in the law, but it is the most obvious explanation for the foreign trade provision: the issue is not the transfer fee, but the availability of the channel itself.

The combination of public and private circuits is not unique — China, the UAE, and India do the same. The peculiarity of the Russian model lies in the strict segmentation by payment purpose, and it is shaped by external circumstances no less than by design. The divergence of trajectories is explained not only by regulatory but also by architectural choices, adds Mikhail Kulakov, leading engineer-analyst of the Blockchain direction at DiSoft. Retail central bank projects in BRICS are built on centralized platforms where the distributed ledger is used selectively. Stablecoins live in the opposite paradigm — public networks, an open ledger, and no single operator. Therefore, two circuits are not two interfaces but two different data models: in one, the record is created by the platform operator; in the other, by the network, while the bank only observes, and the main work falls on the reconciliation layer between them.

Global context and practical conclusion

The American framework took shape over a year. The GENIUS Act (July 2025) requires full backing of stablecoins with liquid assets and directly prohibits accruing income to holders for the token. And on July 11, 2026, the ban on a retail central bank digital currency became law: until the end of 2030, the Fed is not authorized to issue a CBDC. Europe chose the opposite instrument: according to ECB data, in 2022 international card schemes accounted for 61% of eurozone card payments, and thirteen countries depend on them entirely. This is why the digital euro is being designed as a public alternative with zero yield and a holding limit; the regulation has not been adopted, a pilot is planned for the second half of 2027, and the first issuance for 2029.

Mastercard closed the acquisition of BVNK on August 3; the announced price in March was up to $1.8 billion, including about $300 million in contingent payments. The asset's value is largely regulatory: BVNK received a license under the MiCA regulation in Malta in February 2026, valid across the entire EU. In July, Visa launched a stablecoin issuance platform for banks. Card networks are embedding new instruments into the settlement layer while retaining the client and the rules: they do not need the balance; they earn on the flow. The share of stablecoins in cross-border retail payments in 2025 was 0.31%.

The only one to report settlements with real money is the Bank for International Settlements project. On July 30, results were published: about thirty participants, including five central banks, 30 transactions in six currencies totaling approximately one million dollars, with an average settlement time of 80 seconds versus several business days in correspondent practice. At the same time, the platform operated autonomously, without connection to existing systems and without real compliance procedures. The engineering value of Agorá is that there is no need to migrate accounting anywhere: the tokenized deposit remains an obligation of the same bank, the ledger takes on atomicity and synchronization, and no data migration is required. But compliance checks, sanctions screening, and dispute resolution remained outside the scope — these are precisely what constitutes the "last mile," so 80 seconds remain a characteristic of the settlement layer, not of an end-to-end payment.

Country trajectories diverge. Of the eleven BRICS countries, all are studying digital currencies, nine have reached the pilot stage, but none has fully launched a system. China, from January 1, 2026, reclassified the digital yuan in commercial bank accounts as a deposit obligation — interest accrues on it and deposit insurance applies, meaning Beijing decided to return the balance to banks through yield. India is moving in the opposite direction: the volume of the digital rupee in circulation declined for the first time by 24% in the 2025/26 fiscal year, and Brazil in November 2025 shut down the Drex platform, admitting that the technology did not ensure privacy and security.

The digital ruble looks modest — as of July 1, over 25 million digital rubles were in circulation, about $320 thousand for the entire country — but in two months, acceptance becomes mandatory for companies with revenue above 120 million rubles. For foreign trade participants, the law removes part of the legal uncertainty within the Russian circuit, but it does not regulate the external side of the transaction: the foreign counterparty's willingness to accept payment is determined by its own compliance and assessment of sanctions risk. Bitcoin and ether admitted to trading are volatile, and this is an independent risk for a contract with deferred payment.

Mandatory acceptance of the digital ruble creates a forced flow from bank balances into a Central Bank obligation — precisely what everyone else avoids. The question for the next year and a half is not whether the circuits of different countries will align, but whether Russia will repeat China's maneuver — accrue income or otherwise return the balance to banks. The answer will be visible in the dynamics of the deposit base by the end of 2027.

My conclusion: Russia is deliberately building a hybrid model where the public circuit ensures control and independence, and the private one provides flexibility for foreign trade. However, the key risk is not technical but behavioral: if the digital ruble remains an instrument of coercion rather than convenience, it risks repeating the fate of the Chinese yuan, where yield became the only incentive for holding funds in the system. Investors and foreign trade participants should closely monitor the Central Bank's regulations over the next two years — they will determine how viable this two-circuit architecture turns out to be.