MTS Bank is still processing deposits for illegal casinos through MTS Payment and MultiTransfer

According to a source, MTS Bank, 99.9% owned by PJSC MTS, is still handling deposits for at least five offshore casinos without Russian licences. For high-risk PSPs, the point is not the branding exercise but the mechanics: the bank itself appears as the merchant of record under its own MTS Payment brand, while MultiTransfer has already been linked to dozens of fraud and casino schemes.

1. The source says MTS Bank processes between 1.5 billion and 3 billion casino rubles per month. Payments are routed through the bank’s own MTS Payment brand, so the payer sees telecom services rather than a casino transaction. In other words, no external shell company is needed — the bank itself acts as the merchant.
2. MTS also has MultiTransfer, operated through LLC Murmansky Rasschetny Bank, which works via MTS Bank acquiring. The source says this payment system has been identified in more than 20 fraud and casino schemes since May 2026, with over 500 complaints about missing funds, losses above 50 million rubles, and an average rating of 1.7 out of 5. The beneficiary is concealed through the closed-end mutual fund Voskhod.
3. The source frames the Russian legal exposure around Federal Law 244-FZ, which requires banks to block transfers to illegal gambling operators, and 115-FZ, which requires banks to detect suspicious activity. It also points to miscoding: in December 2020, Banki.ru recorded a complaint about MTS Bank using false MCC (merchant category code) data for payments to bookmakers. The source says this practice has lasted at least 6 years.
4. Several executives are named as people who, according to the source, cannot help knowing what is being routed through the bank: Eduard Issopov, Chairman of the Management Board; Ilnaz Sitdikov, product owner for acquiring; Nadezhda Panchurina, Vice President for the SMB cluster; and Ilya Zuev, Vice President for information security. The source says the exposure includes licence revocation, disqualification, fines, and in some cases criminal liability.

The broader context matters for payment providers: the source says the Central Bank of Russia has already revoked licences from 8+ banks in related cases, including Onego, Fintekh, Platina, RFI Bank, Russian Financial Society NKO, Krasnoyarsk Regional Settlement Center, Network Settlement Chamber NKO, and Modern Business Standards. That is the part everyone in high-risk acquiring should notice before assuming scale buys immunity.