Payment card “MTS-Bank”, commission for “throwing” money: the main thing May 16

World

• Twitter has acquired startup Laskie, which offers a job search service. This is the company’s first deal since Elon Musk took over. According to sources, the amount of the transaction is “tens of millions.”

• Telegram has found a vulnerability that allows the camera and microphone to be activated. A Google engineer discovered a weak point in the messaging app for macOS. Through the vulnerability, attackers can gain access to user information from their device.
• In the UK, the world’s first unmanned intercity bus has come on the line. It carries passengers between Edinburgh and Fife County. The length of the route is 22.5 km and the speed of the bus is limited to 80 km/h.

Russia

• A Moscow court ordered Meta (recognized as an extremist and banned in Russia) to pay Russian bloggers 4.5 million rubles, of which 3 million rubles were expenses they incurred for targeted advertising, which they were unable to launch.

• Georgian Airways will start flights to Russia on May 20, the Georgian Civil Aviation Agency reported. Flights from Tbilisi to Moscow will be carried out seven times a week.

Finance

• The measures taken by the Russian authorities, including the forced conversion of depository receipts, helped restore the rights of some Russian investors, said the head of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, Elvira Nabiullina, reports RIA Novosti. According to her, investors returned assets worth about 3 trillion rubles.

• SPB Exchange has published its annual report: the volume of transactions with shares of foreign companies on the site fell by 70% compared to 2021. Due to sanctions and the blockade of securities, Russian investors lost more than 30 billion rubles in income.
• The largest Russian banks began to charge a commission for transferring to themselves from another bank in the amount of 1-2% of the transaction amount.
• MTS-Bank is launching a new product on the market – a payment card with a discount instead of cashback. Experts point out that an immediate discount rather than waiting for a refund at the end of the month can be attractive to customers, Kommersant writes.

• Russian investors were able to return the frozen assets at about 3 trillion rubles, Elvira Nabiullina said. This was facilitated, among other things, by the forced conversion of deposit receipts, said the head of the Central Bank.

Business

• Analysts calculated that in the first four months of 2023, commercial companies froze the implementation of investment projects 3 times more than in all of last year. At the end of April, companies suspended investment projects totaling 782.5 billion rubles.

• Sberbank launched a service to rent its ATMs. You can rent recycling ATMs with pre-installed software developed by InterSphere. Sberbank also launched software for managing self-service devices and monitoring systems on the market.

• The Rounds investment platform (until May 2022 – STRK), which allows small and medium-sized companies to attract investors to online capital, sold 5% of its shares to the current shareholder, a native of the investment company Freedom Finance, Vladimir Kozlov. The company raised 18 million rubles and is now valued at 360 million rubles. The transaction was made on its own Rounds platform.

• Delivery Club has filed an application for the trademark “Market Delivery”. It will focus on urgent delivery of electronics, household items and others, but delivery from restaurants will remain.

• Sales of Smart TVs with Russian operating systems tripled during the year. In the first quarter of 2022, about 87,000 devices with installed voice assistants from Yandex and Sberbank were sold, and in the first quarter of 2023 there are already 300,000, Vedomosti reported.
• In Russia, 60% of small and medium-sized entrepreneurs have not decided on their forecasts for 2023. In the first quarter, executives moved offices to save money, cut marketing budgets and bonuses.

• Magnit is preparing to launch a market with the delivery of goods for the home and country houses, cosmetics and care products, household appliances, etc. The legal entity of retailer JSC Tander posted a promotional video about it on social media a couple of days ago. , but then the video was removed.

• The owner of Rostic’s “Smart Service” bought the Russian KFC business from Polish holding company Amrest for 100 million euros. Amrest owned 215 restaurant chains in Russia. After paying a tax of approximately 4 million euros, the company will completely leave the Russian market.

• British startup Oneday, from Russian Taras Polishchuk, raised $6.2 million from European venture funds. The platform offers educational courses on entrepreneurship. Earlier in the year, Oneday received ECTS accreditation and launched an MBA program.

Transport

• Russian Post began testing two models of electric trucks WOLV FC25 and EVM PRO in Nizhny Novgorod and St. Petersburg. Electric vehicles will be used on intra-urban routes. WOLV FC25 – in courier, EVM PRO – for transporting mail from sorting center and post offices to offices.

• The Federal Air Transport Agency begins development of a Russian light aircraft for pilot training, Vedomosti learned. The training centers of the department throughout Russia are in dire need of such machines.
• The Ery-Glonass SOS button can acquire a voice assistant function through which it will be possible to control devices in the car, writes RIA Novosti.

Services

• SberAuto has launched an independent car inspection service for any transaction in the secondary market. Specialists will check the technical condition of the car, the legal purity of the transaction and possible restrictions on the sale. A total of 250 parameters will be tested.

• Google will start deleting inactive accounts starting in December. This will affect personal accounts that have not been used for the last two years. Almost everything belonging to the account will be deleted: backup copies of photos, letters, Workspace files and calendar events.