Russia’s Rosfinmonitoring says dropper numbers fell 15% in H1, suspicious transaction volume dropped 60%

Russia’s financial intelligence unit says its campaign against “droppers” is already showing up in the numbers: a 15% decline in droppers and a 60% drop in suspicious transaction volume involving them in the first half of the year. For PSPs and banks in high-risk flows, the point is simple: the compliance perimeter around mule-style activity is tightening, and the reporting and card-limit rules are getting harder to work around.

1. Rosfinmonitoring reported that, in the first half of the year, the number of droppers fell by 15% compared with the same period of 2025. It also said the volume of suspicious transactions involving them fell by 60%.
2. The next layer is already scheduled. From 1 September 2026, banks in Russia will be required to pass data to a unified payment card registry, including the numbers and types of individuals’ payment cards, the INN (taxpayer identification number) of the cardholder, and information on cards whose use has been terminated.
3. Russia is also moving to cap the number of bank cards per person at 20. For fraud and mule networks, that means fewer disposable cards in circulation; for banks and processors, it means more pressure on card-portfolio controls and monitoring of linked identities.
4. On Tuesday, 21 July, lawmakers are set to consider in the second and third readings a bill regulating Russia’s crypto market. The source frames this as part of a broader squeeze on “temshchiki” — the informal operators who rely on loopholes and fragmented controls.

For high-risk payment flows, the practical takeaway is that Russia is layering transaction monitoring, card-data centralization, card-count limits, and crypto-market regulation on top of each other. That combination usually changes the economics of mule networks faster than a single enforcement campaign does.