The founder of the international consulting boutique Bespalov Finance, Alexander Bespalov, in an exclusive comment to RB.RU noted that the problems with the Golden Crown service in Georgia lasted several days and were of a technical nature.
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According to Bespalov, the events are quite logical. On August 23, the Center for Financial Technologies (CFT), the developer of a mobile application for Golden Crown, was subjected to US sanctions. Neither Golden Crown itself nor its operator RNKO Payment Center were subjected to sanctions.
“This is a fundamental difference from Golden Crown’s competitor, the Unistream service. Last year, it was its operator, the bank of the same name, that was subjected to US sanctions, and immediately after that Georgian banks stopped working with this service. At the same time, Unistream continues to operate in several other post-Soviet countries. In general, we do not see any desire on the part of Western regulators to limit the operation of these money transfer systems; they fall under individual sanctions rather by accident,” says Bespalov.
He explains that the US and EU are primarily focused on limiting Russian foreign economic activity. And money transfer systems are virtually useless for foreign economic activity: they are targeted at individuals and apply strict restrictions on volumes. Thus, you cannot transfer more than $10,000 per month using Golden Crown.
“Another question is that due to sanctions against Unistream and the cessation of the Contact system (the sanctions have nothing to do with it, this happened after the license of Qiwi Bank was revoked), Zolotaya Korona took an almost monopoly position in many countries, including Georgia,” he notes.
As a result, the conditions for users have worsened significantly. Thus, while at the beginning of 2023, losses on transfers from Russia to Georgia and on conversions normally amounted to 2-3%, now they reach 6-7%.
Given all this, the decline in popularity of addressless international transfer services seems logical, the expert adds, noting the growing interest in other tools: bank transfers in national currencies and, especially, crypto transfers.
On August 27, Georgian banks resumed their work with the Golden Crown payment service; the money transfer system was down for several days. At the moment, this is the only way to quickly transfer money from the Russian Federation to Georgia and vice versa; it is popular both among residents of this country and among those moving from Russia.
Author:
Nikolai Tikhonov
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
