The Central Bank estimated the cost of a dropper card at 30-40 thousand rubles

“Over the current year, the cost of a card with a dropper has increased five to six times in recent months: from 5-6 thousand to 30-40 thousand rubles, and accounts with a dropper now have to be exchanged for hundreds and thousands per day, the banks I have learned to block them quickly,” Shablya said.

According to him, the short lifespan of the dropper card is due to the active implementation by banks of new technologies to control money laundering, including the use of artificial intelligence. Some organizations, according to the expert, can identify suspicious activities in a few minutes or hours. Shablya noted that, as a result, the activity of p2p operations (transfers between cards of individuals) in dropper accounts decreased three times by the end of this year.

Banks, together with the Central Bank, monitor the activities of “processors” – organizations that carry out financial activities for shadow platforms through special software on smartphones, servers and SIM boxes. In particular, a scheme for “warming up” a dropper card has recently appeared on the black market: after purchasing a bank card, for some time truly transparent transactions (purchases of goods and services) are carried out with it in order to eliminate suspicion of the service. of the bank, and only then engage in dubious transfers.

“Processors” also often split a dropper’s card transactions across different banks and into small, one-time amounts. “When the plan organizer manages thousands of such cards using specialized software, the result is impressive,” Shablya added.

The expert also emphasized that the Central Bank continues to actively fight against droppers, mainly with the help of several anonymous payment databases, the analysis data of which the regulator shares with banks. Credit institutions are developing an algorithm to identify shady procedures using their own software.

The Central Bank estimates that the number of Russians who made transfers to questionable cards is 10 million people or 13% of the working population. The day before, it also became known about the regulator’s plans, together with Rosfinmonitoring, to strengthen control over the activity of immigrants in Russian banks and introduce additional stages of identity verification.