UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 6, 2019. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development (UBRD) is now one of Russia's first banks to introduce Mir Pay for their customers. The mobile payment service has been designed by Mir to allow the cardholders to make proximity card-type payments with their smartphones. The service is now available to Mir card holders who use any Android-based (6.0 and up), NFC-supporting smartphone.

According to the bank's press service, you can use any UBRD Mir card (both the proximity kind and other card types) to register with Mir Pay. Mir Pay can be used for making payments at any terminal that accepts Mir proximity cards. All you have to do is unlock your smartphone and place the screen against the POS terminal; you don't even need to open your Mir Pay app to complete the purchase.

'We've introduced other mobile payment services for our customers in the past, which resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of card payments (including the payments made with the help of proximity ones). Since we see improvements in customer service and meeting our customers' needs as our top objective, we decided to keep focusing on payment technologies and so we introduced Mir Pay,' says UBRD Marketing Director Alexei Merzlyakov.

'Mobile payment services are growing increasingly popular on the Russian market, with the overall number of transactions made with the help of the said services tripling in the course of last year. We believe that the launch of Mir Pay gives Russian cardholders a great opportunity to enjoy the speed and convenience of making smartphone payments within our national system,' says Mir's Director-General Vladimir Komlev.