The Central Bank of Russia is changing the rules for banks reporting on customer transactions with cryptocurrency, 2026/01/15 17:23:20

The Bank of Russia is preparing changes to the rules for reporting financial institutions on money transfers by individuals. The new requirements will also apply to transactions with cryptocurrencies.

The Central Bank will oblige banks to provide expanded information about almost all international monetary transactions of Russians. The regulator will begin to request information from banks about whether the sender and recipient of the transfer are residents of the Russian Federation, exactly how the money was transferred, through which intermediary the transaction took place and what the transfer fee is.

The Bank of Russia will require in reporting to separate purchase and sale transactions of digital currency, as well as transactions with utilitarian digital rights. We are talking about digital financial assets (DFAs) – tokenized rights to real-life assets: securities, precious metals and others. In the draft requirements, the Central Bank calls digital currency “a set of electronic data (digital code or designation) contained and circulated in an information system based on a distributed registry.”  

In addition to operations with crypto, the Central Bank requires banks to track purchases of video games and payments for online services. A more detailed reflection of data on purchases of physical goods in online stores is expected, including, for example, cars. 

In 2026, the Bank of Russia intends to analyze the financial market for transactions with cryptocurrencies. A number of banks will be required to provide the regulator with information about their investments in crypto assets and lending to crypto companies. The main purpose of the analysis is to find out the extent to which supervised organizations invest in cryptocurrencies.