UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 11, 2016. The number of applications from customers wishing to receive their pay onto the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s account doubled last year, the bank’s press service reports.

Some 6,000 applications were submitted to the bank in 2015 altogether.

According to head of the UBRD Plastic Card Department Alexei Piskunov, quite a few customers started applying for a bank card account after the so-called ‘pay slavery’ regulation (when you could only get paid into the account in a bank chosen by your employer) was lifted on November 5, 2014.

‘We noticed that customers tend to get a regular card with a set of options they need and then apply for their salaries to be transferred into the card account. For example, over 3,000 customers got a savings card where some interest gets paid to your account balance, and 7% of these customers also decided to have their pay transferred into this account as well. Also, more than 9,000 customers had a cash-back card issued, and 5.5% of them chose it as their salary card,’ Piskunov said.