Russia’s central bank clarifies P2P crypto transfers: what is banned now and what changes on July 1, 2027

Russian media ran with a simple headline: the central bank had banned crypto transfers between individuals. The regulator’s clarification is narrower than that. Direct P2P deals without organizations that arrange digital currency circulation will fall out of the list of permitted operations only from July 1, 2027, and that matters for PSPs because the payment flow is moving toward controlled infrastructure, not disappearing overnight.

1. Right now, the discussion is about digital custodians, including Sberbank, VTB, Atomayz, Voltary, and Cloud Infrastructure. The law contains a closed list of grounds for crediting crypto to a depositary account, and a transfer from another individual is not among them.
2. That means the interaction is structured between the client and the depositary, while these companies do not appear to be running active operations yet. In other words: P2P as such is not banned today, even if the legal path for using it inside this framework is already tightly fenced off.
3. From September 1, 2026, individuals, sole proprietors, and companies will be allowed to conduct cross-border transactions in crypto, while domestic payments in crypto will remain prohibited.
4. On August 4, the president signed the law legalizing crypto: it recognizes crypto as property and introduces general rules for its circulation.
5. After July 1, 2027, residents will generally have to conduct crypto transactions only through participants that organize its circulation, or directly with them. For banks, that is the part worth watching: as more activity moves into supervised infrastructure, they will have more room to ask questions about visible transfers between individuals.

For high-risk payment providers, the practical takeaway is simple: Russia is not moving to a free-for-all. It is moving toward a framework where crypto activity exists, but only through defined participants and with more visibility at the banking layer.