Russia has begun the first nationwide stage of its digital ruble, a central bank digital currency that now sits alongside cash and ordinary bank money as a third official form of the national currency.
The change took effect on 1 September 2026 after years of design work and live pilots that started in 2023.
Under the timetable set in Federal Law No. 248-FZ, the country’s largest banks and many big retailers must now support the instrument, while ordinary people remain free to use it or ignore it.
The digital ruble is issued and recorded on a platform run by the Bank of Russia.
Users do not hold the funds as a conventional deposit at a commercial bank. Instead they open a single digital wallet on the central bank’s system through the mobile app of a connected lender.
A person or company may have only one such wallet; sole traders may keep two, one personal and one for business.
One digital ruble is equal to one cash ruble and one ordinary bank ruble.
Everyday use is designed to look familiar.
Transfers between people, payments between firms, purchases, refunds, and payments to or from the state are all available.
Many shops accept the currency through Russia’s universal QR code network, which already covers millions of outlets. Individuals can move up to 300,000 rubles a month from a bank account into the wallet.
Businesses face no such cap.
Once the money is in the wallet, it can be spent without extra balance limits.For households, transfers and purchases in digital rubles are free.
Firms have a fee holiday through the rest of 2026; from 2027 they will pay charges that the central bank says will be among the lowest in the payments market.
The first mandatory wave covers systemically important banks and merchants whose previous-year revenue exceeded 120 million rubles, provided they already had the required payment agreements.
Further waves follow in September 2027 and September 2028.
Very small sellers, including those with annual revenue under 5 million rubles and sites without internet access, stay outside the obligation.
Early figures suggest curiosity more than mass conversion.
About ten days after launch, Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina said roughly 87,000 new wallets had been opened and more than 50,000 transactions completed.
She described the start as generally smooth, with only limited technical hiccups at a few banks that were later fixed.
Officials still stress that adoption is voluntary for consumers.
Surveys before launch showed many Russians were unsure why a third form of money was needed, and few workers wanted their entire salary paid this way.
Supporters present the project as a way to modernize payments, keep settlement inside a domestic system, and, over time, use programmable features such as smart contracts in public spending and commercial deals.
Critics worry about concentrated visibility of transactions on a central platform and about whether the public will ever prefer the new wallet to cards, instant transfers, and cash. For now the digital ruble is live at national scale, but it is still an option rather than a replacement for the money people already use.