UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 12, 2018. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) recently applied for Visa and Mastercard’s card-to-card transfer option that allows a user to complete the transaction with their phone number as their ID, the bank’s press service reports.

According to the bank, their card-to-card transfer is a very popular service: the overall number of transactions rose by 75% last year alone, and is expected to keep going up.

‘Doing transfers with your phone number is nothing new on the market: most large banks, including UBRD, are already offering this service. Our customers appear to have taken an interest in this option only recently, however: the number of transactions has been only rising in the last two years. At the same time, a bank’s potential is naturally limited to its own customer base. The launch of this latest technology will definitely boost the number of card-to-card transfers. We are currently looking into ways to charge smaller commissions on transfers to cards issued by other banks in order to encourage our online banking service users; card-to-card transfers inside the UBRD system will still be available free of charge,’ says Director of UBRD Digital Products Creation & Development Center Alexander Pateshman.