Unistream Corporate Cards Offer 24-Hour Funds, No Annual Fees In Russia

Unistream, an international money transfer company and bank based in Russia, has launched a corporate card with no annual fees for businesses in the country.

The card provides around-the-clock access to funds, as well as the ability to cash-out in any currency at the minimum commission of 1.5 percent at all ATMs. There is no commission on online payments, and card top-up is free at 170 Unistream cash desks.

“The corporate card has been designed to meet the needs of small enterprises (SMEs). You can order one card for each employee. This helps with work management and control of your SME’s money operations at the same time,” Alexander Lozhkin, Head of Bank Business Development, said in a press release. “We’d like to support entrepreneurs all the way, and setting no annual fees on the card is yet another way to do it.”

Unistream also recently announced that its mobile transfers app is now available in five additional languages. While adoption of electronic B2B payments is limited in Russia, Oksana Korobkina, head of eCommerce at Russian ePayments outfit Yandex.Money, said in a recent interview with PYMNTS that the industry should set its sights higher than the B2C payments space.

With that in mind, her company expects to see the line between B2B and B2C payments disappear.

“The experience of the customer is going to be very similar — it shouldn’t be worse in the B2B industry, for sure,” she said. “It should be at least the same, but even better, because the volumes of B2B payments are much bigger than B2c.”

Yandex.Money and Sberbank also recently announced the launch of a new B2B payments platform that enables companies to send funds within minutes to their suppliers. The solution would represent a major moment for the country’s B2B payments industry, which continues to rely on paperwork and lengthy collaboration with banks to move money.