Elvira Nabiullina
How to regulate the work of marketplaces and build their relationships with other market participants, including banking and other financial organizations, was discussed at the forum “Focus on the Customer”, RBC notes. Among the key problems was the creation of conditions for disloyal competition in the market due to discounts, especially when paying with cards of banks owned by the same marketplaces. Not to mention the displacement of physical networks from the market due to underpayment of taxes.
In this context, the Chairman of the Central Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina said that the Central Bank proposed to discuss with the government the option of prohibiting marketplaces to have their own financial organizations. And she specified that in many countries such a ban is already in place. “But this is a radical way, because we already have marketplaces with their own financial organizations, which are growing very fast. I think we will definitely need now to specify some rules of non-discriminatory access to marketplaces, because the principle itself, it is already in the law of the platform economy, but we need to start just with prohibitions of some such practices that clearly violate the competitive environment,” RBC quoted Nabiullina as saying.
She also noted that banks and marketplaces agree on the need for fair competition, and “we are discussing together with the government and market participants what is fair, fair competition in the conditions of the emergence of the platform economy”.
Representatives of marketplaces are ready to agree with banks on common approaches to discounts and payment methods, but do not agree with the need for a “radical way” to regulate their activities. Evgeny Etin, director of government relations at the united company Wildberries & Russ, said: “If we regulate, we should regulate everyone from the point of view of fairness. Then it is necessary to prohibit in general any loyalty programs that banks have, mobile operators and systems that are connected with mobile operators. Each group has the opportunity to give special conditions, and it is absolutely incomprehensible why the same group, which has its origin in the form of a marketplace, should be deprived of such an opportunity to promote its products, including financial ones”.
