The Bank of Russia Mint has started operating in Ufa

In Ufa, on the basis of the NATIONAL BANK of the Republic of Belarus - a branch of the Bank of RUSSIA, the Coin Market began its work. With the help of this platform, commercial banks of the republic will be able to exchange coins for banknotes and vice versa. Credit institutions will be able to transfer surplus small money directly to each other, bypassing the regulator's division, the press service of the National Bank reported.

“On the electronic platform, applications are being collected from banks that have surplus coins, and vice versa, that lack them. When needs coincide, credit institutions interact directly with each other. This makes it possible to reduce the period for returning coins to active circulation and reduce the costs of the banking system for their recounting, storage and transportation,” said Egor Mikhtanyuk, Deputy Governor of the National Bank for the Republic of Belarus of the Bank of Russia.

Agreements with the Mint Platform were concluded by six largest banks operating in the territory of the republic. Over time, other credit organizations may join the project.

The first Mint of the Central Bank was launched in 2018 in Nizhny Novgorod. Since then, the same exchange offices have opened in almost all major cities of the country - in Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Perm, Chelyabinsk, Krasnodar, Samara, Volgograd, Omsk and others.

As RBC reported, in March 2021, the Central Bank announced an experiment to collect coins from the population. In one of the regions of the country, machines for receiving coins were to be installed. The need for a pilot project in the Central Bank was explained by a decrease in the return of coins from the population. If before the pandemic, 63% of metallic money issued to citizens was returned to the cash desks of the Bank of Russia, then in 2020 this figure fell to 46%. In this regard, in 2020, the Bank of Russia issued an additional 1.3 billion coins, that is, nine for each inhabitant of the country.